Review of a Sweet Potato Pie

I decided to try something new this week; review a food item. I don’t normally do this. I normally just eat and make a mental note whether I would eat it again or not. But this was my first Sweet Potato Pie we had this holiday season, and I thought I would try my hand at reviewing it.

I didn’t grow up with sweet potato pie being offered at the holiday table. We had sweet potatoes. They were cooked, mashed with brown sugar and thrown in the oven with a layer of marshmallows on top. Sort of a sweet potato casserole, I guess. And I loved that, but once I became diabetic, I had to give that up.

This year, we stopped at a store we don’t often shop at to look for a dessert, because I’d forgotten to pick up dessert at our regular store. And they had plenty of pies to choose from; blueberry, peach, apple, cherry, sweet potato and pumpkin. I was trying to decide between the fruit pies (I’m not a big fan of pumpkin pie), when my husband suggested a sweet potato pie. He always says I never try anything new, so it surprised him when I agreed. He snatched up a sweet potato pie and headed for the register.

When the time came for dessert on Christmas Day, I took a closer look at that sweet potato pie. It looked a lot like a pumpkin pie, only yellow, not orange. And I didn’t see any little specks of spice in it, like you sometimes see in a pumpkin pie. I cut it into pieces and served it with some whipped cream.

The crust was not really flaky, just a layer of flour crust. The whipped cream was typical, sweet and creamy foam. The filling was creamy, like the filling of a pumpkin pie, but it tasted like sweet potatoes. Like a baked sweet potato, not with the brown sugar and marshmallow sweetness of my childhood sweet potato casserole. So I ate it, but I thought it could have used some cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice, even though that would make it more like the pumpkin pie I’m not that fond of.

Would I eat it again? Probably. If it was a choice between it or pumpkin pie. Or mincemeat pie. But I’m in no hurry to learn how to make it.