Old-Fashioned Sweet Potato Pie

Cook the Sweet Potatoes: Choose Your Method

• Oven: Preheat the oven to 425°F. Pierce the sweet potatoes several times with a fork and bake for 45-60 minutes, or until completely tender through the center.
• Microwave: Pierce the potatoes and microwave on high for 5 minutes. Turn them over and microwave for approximately another 5 minutes, or until tender.
• Let the potatoes cool until comfortable enough to handle.

Make the Pie Crust

• Whisk the flour, salt, and brown sugar together in a large bowl. Cut or work the cold butter into the flour mixture until coarse crumbs form. Add the ice-cold water 1 tablespoon at a time, mixing just until the dough holds together when pressed. Form the dough into a ball without overworking it.
• Roll the dough on a lightly floured surface or between two sheets of parchment paper into an approximately 12-inch circle less than ¼ inch thick. Carefully transfer it to a 9-inch pie plate and gently press it into the bottom and sides without stretching. Trim the dough to about ½ inch beyond the edge of the pie plate and crimp the edges. Refrigerate the unbaked pie crust while preparing the filling.

Prepare the Sweet Potato Filling & Bake

• Cut the sweet potatoes in half, scoop out the flesh, and measure 2½ cups. While still warm, mash the sweet potato with the softened butter until mostly smooth. Let the mixture cool until it is no longer hot. Add the granulated sugar, brown sugar, heavy cream, eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, and vanilla. Mix until smooth and evenly combined.
• Reduce the oven temperature to 350°F if you baked the sweet potatoes, or preheat it to 350°F if you used the microwave method. Pour the sweet potato filling into the chilled pie crust and smooth the top. Bake for 55-60 minutes, or until the filling is set around the edges and the center still jiggles slightly when the pie is gently moved.
• Transfer the pie to a wire rack and cool completely at room temperature for approximately 2 hours. The filling will continue to set as it cools. Slice and serve once completely cooled.

• Get out and measure your ingredients.
• Using your food processor pulse flour, salt and sugar until combined. Sprinkle butter pieces over flour mixture and pulse several times. Add shortening and continue pulsing until flour is pale yellow and resembles crumbs, no larger than the size of pearls. Dump crumbs into another bowl, if necessary.
• Evenly distribute 4 - 5 tablespoons of ice water on mixture. Knead dough until dough forms a ball.
• Flatten dough into a 4 or 5 inch roundish ball. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, or up to 2 days, before you need to roll use it.
• Allow to come to room temperature before using. Roll dough out on lightly floured surface or between two large sheets of parchment paper into a 12 inch roundish circle, less than ¼ inch thick.
• Carefully place dough into pie plate by gently lifting dough edges with one hand while pressing around the pan bottom with your other hand. Trim edge to ½ inch beyond pan edge. Refrigerate uncooked pie shell for 40 minutes and then freeze for 20 minutes. This technique will help to reduce crust shrinkage while baking.
• Preheat your oven to 375 degrees, when ready to bake.
• Press heavy duty or doubled foil inside uncooked pie shell and fold foil edges over to protect pie crust edge from burning. Weight foil down as best you can using weights like dried beans or uncooked rice. I've even taken a smaller pie plate filled with water and placed it in the middle of the plate, on top of the uncooked crust, and it worked beautifully. Bake, leaving everything on top of crust until crust looks dry, 18 to 20 minutes. I simply bake for 18 minutes and gently remove foil and weights by lifting foil edges or doing whatever is necessary to remove foil and weights. Return crust to oven and bake until a nice golden brown, about 8 -10 minutes longer. Remove pie crust from oven and reduce your oven's temperature to 350 degrees.
• Pierce sweet potatoes many times with fork and place on paper towels and microwave on full power for 5 minutes, flip each potato over and cook until tender, not mushy, another 5 minutes. Cool potatoes for 10 to 15 minutes.
• Cut each potato in half and scoop and scrape out potato flesh into a bowl, reserve skins for another use or discard. I sometimes use an oven mitt to hold potatoes or paper towels or a clean cloth, if too hot to handle. There should be around 2 cups of sweet potato flesh when you're done. While potatoes are still hot or at least warm, add butter and mash with masher or fork until only small lumps of potato remain.
• In a medium sized bowl, combine eggs, egg yolks, sugar, nutmeg, and salt with a whisk.
• Add bourbon, molasses, vanilla, and milk.
• Slowly add egg mixture to your sweet potatoes until combined.
• Heat your partially baked pie crust in your oven until warm, around 5 minutes.
• Sprinkle brown sugar across bottom of pie crust, as evenly as possible.
• Pour your sweet potato mixture on top of brown sugar layer until covered.
• Bake for 45 minutes and filling is set around edges and center jiggles slightly when adjusted.
• Transfer pie to wire rack to allow to cool to room temperature which takes somewhere around 2 hours.
• Serve and slice.