Saturday, November 27, 2004

Purple Sweet Potato Pie


Purple Sweet Potato Pie

My last attempt to make a dessert out of my dad’s purple sweet potatoes was not a great success. Since then, I had been thinking that condensed milk might improve the taste of these rather tasteless sweet potatoes. So, being inspired by the recent sweet potato pie posts by
Dennis and JMom, I went for another experiment yesterday. I made purple sweet potato pie.

Basically I followed the recipe that JMom posted, but since the texture of my potatoes was different from regular sweet potatoes, I omitted the flour and changed the amount of milk. And I added some condensed milk, the key ingredient of the experiment this time. Usually I love the combination of sweet potatoes and cinnamon, but with this particular kind of sweet potatoes, I felt differently. So I just added a small amount of nutmeg and allspice.



The result: BINGO! The condensed milk did a perfect job. :D
The only thing is that I made this pie yesterday, but garnished/took photos today. So in the photo, the pie doesn’t look as good as it did yesterday. I should have taken a photo right after it came out of the oven! I really wanted to show you the beautiful purple color!!


20 comments:

obachan said...

Hi Jonny,

Looks like there are several kinds of purple sweet potatoes available in Japan, and I’m not sure if dad’s are the same as Okinawan sweet potatoes. Maybe Okinawan ones are white outside and purple inside (and a little sweeter)? Dad’s are purple both outside and inside.

Dennis Mai said...

The sweet potato pie looks pretty smooth. Great job! :o)

Unknown said...

looks good from here Obachan!

Fish Fish said...

Dear Obachan, 2 thumbs up for this murasaki imo. I am not a big fan of imo, but I can never resist a purple imo. Maybe becoz my lucky colour is purple. :P And this murasaki imo definitely looks gorgeous. Well done! :)

obachan said...

> Dennis --- Thanks. I’m so happy with the result, too.

> drstel --- Glad to hear that :)

> Jonny --- So you have Okinawan purple sweet potatoes in California? Gee. Looks like you can get anything Japanese in California, can’t you??

> fish fish --- Oh, purple is your lucky color? So maybe you’ll have a good luck pretty soon then. If you find a 500-yen coin on the street in the near future, notice it’s the effect of obachan’s purple colored pie ;) hahaha….

obachan said...

I love bibimbap in a hot stone pot :D

JMom said...

Hi Obachan! My, that looks delicious! The addition of condensed milk reminds me of a Filipino dish using purple yam too, it's called ube. My girls love it. The Filipino version is crustless though.

obachan said...

Hi JMom,
I searched for the ube dessert you mentioned and found something called “Ube Halaya.” Is this it?

JMom said...

Hi Obachan, yep, that's it!

Anonymous said...

I was just looking some purple sweet potato roots to grow here in Italy !!

Anybody can help me ?

thanks


Angelo 

Posted by Angelo

Anonymous said...

Hi Angelo,
Welcome to my site :)
I have no idea if or how you can get purple sweet potatoes in Italy... Sorry. Hope someone gives you the information you need.  

Posted by obachan

Anonymous said...

Hi Obachan

Can you post your modified recipe for the purple sweet potato pie. It looks delicious.

obachan said...

Hi ManisManis,
Thanks for your interest. But I’m terribly sorry… as you see, it was a long time ago that I made this pie and I didn’t save the modified version of the recipe. The only thing I remember is that I added milk until the potato filling felt like a little thick pumpkin pie filling. As for the amount of condensed milk, I guess it was 1 or 2 Tbsp, but not positive. Basically, to make the filling, I repeated the process of tasting it, then adding some more of this and that, and tasting again…total improvisation. Sorry.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your answer Obachan. I am currently obsessed with trying to get purple colored muffin (naturally). I made some recently with the purple sweet potatoes. However, they turned bright green because of a chemical reaction with the bicarbonate soda and the baking powder (both alkaline). Do you have any idea how to overcome this?

obachan said...

I googled some Japanese sites and some said adding a little lemon juice would prevent the problem. I haven't tried it myself so I'm not sure if it really works or not, but sounds like worth trying. (No website said exactly how much lemon juice.)

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the research Obachan. I will 'neutralize' the sweet potatoes the next time.

obachan said...

Good luck, manismanis. Let me know if it worked.

Anonymous said...

Looks Awesome but where in the world could you find purple sweet potatoes.I never even new they existed!

Metamother said...

It DOES look good! What a beautiful purple. How does the murasaki imo's consistency and texture compare to traditional Sweet Potato Pie coming out of grandma's kitchen here in America? It seems like you used a traditional Southern recipe just like our African-American grandmothers used to make (and southerners of all backgrounds came to love). (Also, by the way, just a little lemon, not much.)

obachan said...

Hi! Thanks for your comment. I think the consistency and texture are almost the same... well, maybe ours is a little more dry?
I miss pies in America...