How about a Tiny Russian Village Sweet Potato Pie recipe? Easy enough to make in the middle of “Nowhere Russia!”
No, not Pumpkin Pie, but Sweet Potato! This pie was also baked in a tiny toaster oven, so you have to have the right size of pie dish to bake it in. I used a deep aluminum bread bake throw away pan. Contrary to popular belief, a toaster oven can actually bake and bake I did. I baked a real sweet potato pie and I have a sweet pea of a girl who will testify that it was delicious…
This was Sveta’s first sweet potato pie and I can see that it will not be the last. The issue is that in Russia, sweet potatoes are hard to find and these had to be brought with Sveta from Moscow. Now pumpkins are a dime a dozen, but Christmas is special and Sveta needed a special pie for the holiday… 😉
Lets make a sweet potato pie!
Ingredients:
Two large sweet potatoes,
One cup of sweet condensed milk,
One teaspoon ground cinnamon,
One quarter teaspoon nutmeg,
A pinch of ginger, (Two pinches for you, I have huge fingers!)
I small package of vanilla pudding mix,
Two eggs,
Three teaspoons of real butter.
A package of ginger cookies, any type will do and or gram crackers will do just as good! (and)
One can of spray whipped cream…
Lets Make Filling:
Start a pan of water boiling on the stove. Peel the sweet potatoes and cut up into the pan of water. Set on low heat and put a lid on the pan. Let boil lightly and check on it a few times. Once the sweet potato slides easily off a fork stuck into it, it is done enough…
Drain the water off the sweet potatoes and mash the sweet potatoes until you are happy with the consistency. I toss in one teaspoon of butter and it helps to make a smoother blending…
Now in the same pan with the mashed sweet potatoes; add all the sweet condensed milk, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, vanilla pudding mix, two eggs and once again blend well. Set mixture aside for now…
Lets Make the Crust…
Grab the cookie for the crust and crush the cookies. Ginger cookies are dry, so they crumble easily and Gram Crackers do to. But in Russia, we do not have Gram Crackers, so we find any ginger cookie to use. Put the crumbled cookies in the bottom of the baking pan and pour two teaspoons of melted butter on top and stir it up to coat the crumbs…
Then add the sweet potato mixture and fill to the level you want. I just poured it all into the pan and it was deep enough to hold it. Then after tapping the pan bottom against the table a few times to settle air bubbles out; off to the tiny oven…
All I can say at this point is that I baked the pie 15 minutes at a time (timer on machine,) 45 minutes on bottom only heat and five minutes with top and bottom heat. It looks like the last 5 minutes was really too much (bottom started to burn,) thus, turn top heat on during the last 5 minutes of the 15 minute cycle. Pie is done when a knife stuck in comes out clean… (Oven has no heat adjustment, just a mechanical timer! You have to adjust yourself to suit the needs of the greater…)
Image at left is what we had to work with as we ate it and if all the Ooo’s and Aaaa’s from Sveta are an indication, then I know I will have to make this pie again… 😉
The can of whip cream is a very important part of the dessert. Sveta would be grouchy without her whipped cream on top and we are lucky that we found it at the big village. This is one of those imported products and now Russia produces her own whip cream in a spray can. It is good…
This is called; The Tiny Russian Village Sweet Potato Pie…. Or as I call it, “Yummy!”
Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia (WtR)