Yam pie is a traditional dessert in the southern United States, made with mashed sweet potatoes, sugar, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, egg, milk, and vanilla. It is believed to have originated from American slaves who had yams as a familiar food. The East Texas Yamboree holds an annual potato pie competition, and the perfect filling includes mashed sweet potatoes or yams, flour, milk, butter, sugar, and egg yolks. The pie is often served with whipped cream or marshmallows and can be enjoyed a la mode with vanilla ice cream.
Sweet potatoes may not be salty enough for some scoops, but that could make them useful in a dessert. Yam pie is a solid tradition that dates back several generations in the southern part of the United States. It’s a simple blend of mashed sweet potatoes with sugar, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, egg, milk, and vanilla that is poured into a pie crust for baking. When done, this pie looks a lot like — and tastes — pumpkin pie, which is another iconic Thanksgiving icon.
According to California State University Professor Joseph Holloway, yams were a familiar food for American slaves, both those on the road and those already working Southern plantations. Holloway argues that the yam pie is likely to have originated from them. It was among the few lean ingredients listed in the slave ship’s average logs, which included black-eyed peas, plantain, okra, bread, fish, rice, and sweet potatoes.
It doesn’t take many ingredients to make yam pie. Many families already have the eggs, milk, sugar, salt, butter, cinnamon, and vanilla needed for the filling. A standard pie dough can be whipped with some flour, sugar and eggs or simply bought from the store. The dough, then the filling, goes into the cake pan. An hour after baking to 350°F (about 177°C), a lightly browned skin on the cake will indicate it’s time for the yam cake to start cooling.
The East Texas Yamboree, a festival that began in 1935 to promote the local cash crop, has held a potato pie competition for each of its years of operation. In 2011, with the festival growing to carnival size and over 100,000 annual visitors, the pie competition committee offered an ingredient report for the perfect sweet potato pie filling on its website. A pie with approximately 1 .5 cups (about 300 g) of mashed sweet potatoes or yams yields one “heaped” teaspoon (about 2.67 g) of flour, 1 cup (about 240 mL) of milk or cream, 2 tablespoons (about 28. 5 g) of butter or margarine, 1 cup (about 201 g) of sugar and the yolks of three eggs. Naturally, the contest is won by those who know how to lightly tinker with the concoction, even if the committee forbids changes to important ingredients like adding raisins, coconut or nuts.
After cooling, the potato cake is regularly smeared with whipped cream. Some use marshmallows or marshmallow cream instead. Potato cake a la mode, with vanilla ice cream, wouldn’t be an uncommon choice either.
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