Thursday, September 30, 2010

Sweet Potato Casserole—Side Dish—or Dessert?

RileyAdamsFoodBlogPostpic_thumb_thumb[3]
Are y’all enjoying the first bit of fall?  I am!  The weather just this week finally dipped down out of the 90s—plus we had some amazing rain, which I’ve really loved seeing (although some parts of North Carolina have had some flooding from it—we’ve been lucky so far just to have a nice, steady rain.) 
Now I feel like I can get set up for fall!  The kids are asking me to go find a pumpkin.  I’ve put out the Halloween place mats on the table.  I’ve got the box of decorations ready to put out on Friday (I felt like it really should be October when I put the rest of the Halloween stuff out.) 
IMG_20100929_114156And I’ve got a strong desire to eat orange food.  :)
So this week I decided to run my favorite sweet potato casserole.  My family loves this recipe.  My husband would practically eat sweet potatoes raw, he loves them so much.  And my kids?  Well, this recipe has an obscene amount of butter and sugar in it, so no wonder they love it!  It’s practically dessert.
So let me share the recipe with you and you tell me—is it a side dish?  Or dessert?
IMG_20100929_124744 
Sweet Potato Casserole

Preheat oven to 350.

3 cups cooked, mashed sweet potatoes (3 C is about 2 large potatoes)
1 stick margarine (I mix it in with the hot potatoes and it melts on contact)
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
Topping
1 cup light brown sugar
1/2 stick margarine, melted
1/3 cup flour
1 cup chopped nuts (sometimes I use pecans, sometimes walnuts)
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Mix the casserole ingredients together and pour it into a well-greased long casserole dish.  Mix the topping and sprinkle it over the top of the mixture.  Bake at 350 for 35 minutes, or until hot and browned.
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It might be dessert….but it’s a great way to eat your veggies! 
Riley/Elizabeth
Delicious and Suspicious (July 6 2010) Riley Adams
Pretty is as Pretty Dies –Elizabeth Spann Craig

11 comments:

  1. Delish! Thanks, Elizabeth!!
    If I were to ever fix a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner without sweet potato casserole, my mom and husband would be furious with me. We are divided though about the toppings - Donald still wants baby marshmallows on top instead of the chopped nuts. So I do it one way for Thanksgiving, another way for Christmas.

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  2. Great recipe. This is a 'must' at our house too during the holidays. As much as we enjoy it, you'd think we'd eat it more often but I guess eating it only on holidays keeps it special. LOL With your great recipe I may try to change that.

    Mason
    Thoughts in Progress

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  3. Sigh. Much as I love desserts, I have never been able to swallow sweet potatoes. Or beets. Makes no sense to me. Maybe if you labeled this one a dessert?

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  4. I cook sweet potatoes every week, but for my dogs. Shh, don't tell them I could make it with sugar, eggs, and butter! This sounds wonderful, but I still maintain that it's a side dish. One that tastes as good as dessert!

    ~ Krista

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  5. Oh, Riley, now you've got my mouth watering! I do love sweet potato casserole—and it's definitely a vegetable. I've begun cutting halving (or cutting out entirely) the sugar in the sweet potato mix but using butter instead of margarine and keeping the brown sugar in the topping. Sometimes, when I think about it, I drop in a handful of coconut too.

    This is perfect timing to remind me to call my favorite sweet potato farmer and reserving a bushel of Covingtons (developed by my late neighbor).

    Yummy!

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  6. Kaye--Ooh...a house divided! I like the marshmallows, too, but then I think we'd HAVE to call it a dessert, wouldn't we?

    Mason--It's funny because my husband said the same thing last night, "What's the special occasion?" It made me feel bad that I'm not serving it more often!

    Sheila--You're the only vote to have it be a dessert! It's possible I could trick you into eating it because you might not be able to tell this was sweet potatoes (as long as you didn't look at it and see all the orange!)

    Krista--Your dogs would never forgive you if they knew what you were hiding from them! Ha! They eat *awfully* well, though, I have to say. Maybe better than I do, some days!

    Avery--I wonder how long I can go on my orange food kick? :)

    Hi Molly! Oh, *coconut*--that would be wonderful. :) Yes, let's count it as a vegetable and we can feel like we're doing something good for ourselves. I think using butter would be a great way to keep the sweetness and cut back on the sugar. Except that brown sugar in the topping...mmm! Wish I had a sweet potato farmer as a friend!

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  7. I need one more day of summer, Saturday, outdoor dinner party planned...

    I'm waiting for a cold nasty rainy windy day so I can make Chili.

    As to sweet potato casseroles... where's the little marshmallows???

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  8. A Year on the Grill--But see, Dave, that really *would* make it a dessert! I have to at least pretend that I'm making a serious veggie here. :)

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  9. I am a diabetic but I love my sweet potato casserole so I bake my seet potatoes, peel them and cut into cubes, use I Can't Believe It's Not butter spray and LIBERALLY coat them then I stir in DaVinci's sugar-free English Toffee coffee flavoring. It has a wonderful brown sugar flavor that(almost) makes up for not using the real thing. I then sprinkle the top with pecans and bake as usual. Pretty darn tasty if I say so myself, and my non-diabetic family loves it as well. ~~Nurse JudyMac

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  10. Oh Elizabeth...
    I first got this recipe when I made the critical mistake of bringing sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top to my first Thanksgiving in Texas!!! My sweet Texan friends were appalled that I brought the Yankee version of yams ;-) I have never done marshmallows again!! My nephew nicknamed this wonderful dish "Yamooze" and my kids will eat it for breakfast the day after...
    I'm ready for orange foods, too :-)
    Nanc

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