Brown Butter Sweet Potato Pie with Kamut Crust
I always force myself to wait until after Halloween to start thinking much about holiday pies or, really, future holidays in general. But this year I cheated a bit, tempted heavily by the lure of a warmly-spiced sweet potato pie that I used to make back when I baked pies for a living in the Bay Area (way back when). We seem to always have sweet potatoes around as they’re one of Oliver’s favorite foods, and when I roast them for his lunch I’ve been wishing I could turn them into a silky pie instead. So the other day I reserved part of the sweet potatoes for me. For a pie that I’ve made hundreds of times in the past, this time reimagined with fragrant brown butter, sweetened solely with maple syrup, and baked into a flaky kamut crust. We haven’t started talking about the Thanksgiving menu yet this year, but I know one thing for sure: this sweet potato pie will make an appearance. I’ve made a number of pies on this site in the past (and listed a handful at the bottom of this post if you need some additional baking inspiration), and hundreds for my baking business, Marge. Today at Marge we focus solely on granola, but when I first started the company in San Francisco six years ago, pies were my thing. I’d bake them Thursdays and Fridays in my rental kitchen in Richmond, load up my little Volkswagon early Saturday and Sunday mornings and drive them to the farmers markets where I’d sell whole pies and individual slices. Unlike a lot of competitors, I made the pie dough and rolled it out by hand — a real labor of love come Thanksgiving when orders would stream in and I’d work late into the night, questioning this very decision (as well as my sanity … and my business plan).
At the time I favored a pretty standard all-butter pie crust made with all-purpose flour, but these days — as you know — I love experimenting with whole grain flours whenever I can. And while it’s feasible to make alternative flour swaps with simple baked goods like muffins or quick breads, a really flaky pie crust isn’t always as forgiving. In the past, I’ve fallen in love with a rye pie dough or, if nothing else, often add in some whole wheat pastry flour in place of the all-purpose flour. But I’ve been determined to try making pie dough with kamut flour ever since teaching a class with it a few months back at The Pantry.
If you’re not familiar with kamut (its full name is Kamut Khorasan Wheat), it’s an ancient relative of modern day wheat that looks a lot like a wheat berry except it has a really pretty, golden hue. You can buy the hearty grains and eat them much like you would wheat berries or farro (grain salads, pilafs) or you can buy them ground down into a flour with a nice, light texture and a subtle, buttery flavor — a natural fit for holiday pies.
I used Bob’s Red Mill kamut flour largely because I love Bob’s Red Mill products and have been using them for many years now. They’re really easy to find, and with such a vast line of whole grain flours and nut flours, I’m often inspired to break out of a rut and try something new. The pie dough recipe here should feel familiar if you’ve made a homemade pie dough before (and if you haven’t, let’s do this!): it’s an all-butter affair that I like to make by hand. Keep your ingredients cold, turn on some good tunes, work relatively quickly (you want that butter to remain cold to get the best, flakiest crust) — and all will be just fine.
In addition to the buttery whole grain crust, this filling is worth talking about. If you’re an ardent pumpkin fan, I encourage you to give sweet potato pie a try. It has a very similar spice profile so you still get all those warm spices but I find the filling to be much lighter and airier. I think it would’ve been hard to do this when I was baking dozens and dozens of pies for special orders, but at home I like to whisk brown butter in with the sweet potato custard; it has that nutty, fragrant character that makes this pie really deluxe and special. If you’ve never made brown butter at home, google a quick tutorial (this one is good) — it’s really not at all difficult, and makes all the difference in flavor.
As I was working on this recipe I found myself photographing it like crazy, sharing it with family and friends, and talking about it non-stop with Sam. I even went so far as to give Oliver a few tastes, which is generally against my ‘sugar’s not good for babies’ philosophy. I hadn’t felt this excited about something to come out of the kitchen in a long time, and I couldn’t quite place the feeling. It wasn’t simply a craving for pie — it was more that I hadn’t made a pie in such a long time that muscle memory kicked in and I started to just get in the zone, relishing in something that I felt capable and good at.
It’s funny when you start a business because you love to do something — bake pies, for instance — and as the business grows and morphs and your role changes (as it’s bound to), you no longer do that thing you loved to do. So it’s become clear: I need to bake more pies at home, and I think marrying my old recipes with my new interests (natural sugars and whole grain flours) feels just as exciting as the initial journey was many years ago. So, onward!
I realize this recipe may look a little long, but I assure you the steps are all quite manageable. To make things easy on yourself, roast the sweet potatoes and make the pie dough the day before so on the day you’re baking the pie you’re focusing on browning butter, making the filling (which is quick at this point), and rolling out and pre-baking the crust. I’d love to know if you make this pie and what you think of it. If you decide to share on Instagram, tag it with #asweetspoonful and @meganjgordon so I can see yours!
A Few Other Pies You May Like:
Salted Honey Pie
Apple Cider Cream Pie (this is another great holiday candidate!)
Shaker Lemon Pie
Grapefruit Chess Pie with Sweet Rye Crust
Brown Butter Sweet Potato Pie with Kamut Crust
- Yield: One 9-inch pie
- Prep time: 1 hr 45 mins
- Cook time: 1 hr 28 mins
- Inactive time: 1 hr
This sweet potato pie is sweetened solely with maple syrup and has a slight butterscotchy flavor thanks to the fragrant browned butter. I roast the sweet potatoes (boiling them can make for a pie with a little more moisture than I ultimately want) but you can certainly use canned sweet potato or even pumpkin here if you’d prefer. The one step not to skimp on is pre-baking the pie shell: whenever you’re working with a custard (or wet) filling, you really want to do this so your bottom crust won’t end up soggy.
Ingredients
Sweet Potato Filling:
Kamut Crust
Instructions
Make the pie dough: Whisk both flours, salt and sugar together in a medium bowl. Using a pastry blender (or your fingertips), cut the butter into the flour, working quickly, until mostly pea-size bits of butter are left. Drizzle in the cider vinegar and 2 tablespoons of ice water and stir with a fork or your fingers. Add more of the ice water mixture, 1 tablespoon at a time, until the dough comes together into more of a uniform ball. It’s ok if there are some dry, mealy bits and great if there are bits of butter still visible. Test if it’s done by squeezing and pinching the dough with your fingertips to see if you can gather it together. Shape into a flat, chubby disk, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour and up to 1 day.
Roll and bake the pie shell: When you’re ready to roll out your crust, take out the dough about 10-15 minutes before working with it so it has a chance to soften up just a bit and become more pliable and easier to work with. Then work quickly to roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface until it’s about 11-12 inches round. Carefully transfer to a 9-inch pie plate and nestle gently into place. Leave 1-inch of overhang (if there’s a great deal of overhang, trim), then fold edges under and crimp.
Preheat the oven to 375 F. Prick the bottom of the pie shell a few times. Line with parchment paper or aluminum foil and fill to the top with pie weights or dried beans. Bake for 20 minutes, or until lightly golden. Remove pie weights or beans along with parchment or foil and bake for an additional 8 minutes, or until the shell is nice and dry on the bottom.
Make the filling: Preheat oven to 400 F. Prick sweet potatoes with a fork, set on a baking sheet and bake for one hour, or until soft. When finished cooking, remove sweet potatoes from the oven and reduce the temperature to 350 F.
In a small light-colored saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat, stirring occasionally with a rubber spatula to encourage even cooking. Cook until butter begins to foam, about 4-5 minutes. Continue cooking until the foam subsides and little brown bits appear at the bottom of the pan, smelling fragrant and nutty. Pour butter into a heatproof bowl, remove from heat, and stir for 1-2 minutes to allow it to cool. Set aside.
When cool enough to handle, slice sweet potatoes in half and scoop out the flesh. Discard the skin and place sweet potatoes in a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Puree until smooth (should yield about 1 2/3 cup). Add the eggs, maple syrup, heavy cream, sour cream, vanilla extract, flour, cinnamon, ginger, cloves and salt and pulse a few times to combine well. Slowly stream in the slightly-cooled brown butter.
Pour the mixture into the prepared pie shell and bake until set, about 55-60 minutes. The pie is finished when the edges are completely set and the center is no longer liquid but still a touch jiggly (it will continue to set after it comes out of the oven). Cool on a wire rack for at least 2 hours before serving. Serve warm or room temperature with whipped cream if you’d like.
Healthy Comfort Food
Thai Carrot, Coconut and Cauliflower Soup
People describe raising young kids as a particular season in life. I hadn't heard this until we had a baby, but it brought me a lot of comfort when I'd start to let my mind wander, late at night between feedings, to fears that we'd never travel internationally again or have a sit-down meal in our dining room. Would I ever eat a cardamom bun in Sweden? Soak in Iceland? I loved the heck out of our tiny Oliver, but man what had we done?! Friends would swoop in and reassure us that this was just a season, a blip in the big picture of it all. They promised we'd likely not even remember walking around the house in circles singing made-up songs while eating freezer burritos at odd hours of the day (or night). And it's true.
Oliver is turning two next month, and those all-encompassing baby days feel like a different time, a different Us. In many ways, dare I say it, Toddlerhood actually feels a bit harder. Lately Oliver has become extremely opinionated about what he will and will not wear -- and he enforces these opinions with fervor. Don't get near the kid with a button-down shirt. This week at least. He's obsessed with his rain boots and if it were up to him, he'd keep them on at all times, especially during meals. He insists on ketchup with everything (I created a damn monster), has learned the word "trash" and insists on throwing found items away on his own that really, truly are not trash. I came to pick him up from daycare the other day and he was randomly wearing a bike helmet -- his teacher mentioned he'd had it on most of the day and really, really didn't want to take it off. The kid has FEELINGS. I love that about him, and wouldn't want it any other way. But, man it's also exhausting.
Cheesy Quinoa Cauliflower Bake
I just finished washing out Oliver's lunchbox and laying it out to dry for the weekend. My favorite time of day is (finally) here: the quiet of the evening when I can actually talk to Sam about our day or sit and reflect on my own thoughts after the inevitable dance party or band practice that precedes the bedtime routine lately. Before becoming pregnant for the second time, I'd have had a glass of wine with the back door propped open right about now -- these days though, I have sparkling water or occasionally take a sip from one of Sam's hard ciders. Except now the back door's closed and we even turned on the heat for the first time yesterday. The racing to water the lawn and clean the grill have been replaced by cozier dinners at home and longer baths in the evening. You blink and it's the first day of fall.
Stuffed Shells with Fennel and Radicchio
I'd heard from many friends that buying a house wasn't for the faint of heart. But I always shrugged it off, figuring I probably kept better files or was more organized and, really, how hard could it be? Well, I've started (and stopped) writing this post a good fifteen times which may indicate something. BUT! First thing's first: we bought a house! I think! I'm pretty sure! We're still waiting for some tax transcripts to come through and barring any hiccough with that, we'll be moving out of our beloved craftsman in a few weeks and down the block to a great, brick Tudor house that we wanted the second we laid eyes on it. The only problem: it seemed everyone else in Seattle had also laid eyes on it, and wanted it equally as much. I'm not really sure why the homeowner chose us in the end. Our offer actually wasn't the highest, but apparently there were some issues with a few of them. We wrote a letter introducing ourselves and describing why we'd be the best candidates and why we were so drawn to the house; we have a really wonderful broker who pulled out all the stops, and after sifting through 10 offers and spending a number of hours deliberating, they ended up going with ours. We were at a friend's book event at the time when Sam showed me the text from our broker and I kind of just collapsed into his arms. We were both in ecstatic denial (wait, is this real?! Did we just buy a house?) and celebrated by getting chicken salad and potato salad from the neighborhood grocery store and eating it, dazed, on our living room floor. Potato salad never tasted so good.
Smoky Butternut Squash and Three Bean Chili
If your house is anything like ours, last week wasn't our most inspired in terms of cooking. We're all suffering from the post-election blues -- the sole upside being Oliver's decision to sleep-in until 7 am for the first time in many, many months; I think he's trying to tell us that pulling the covers over our heads and hibernating for awhile is ok. It's half-convincing. For much of the week, instead of cooking, there'd been takeout pizza and canned soup before, at week's end, I decided it was time to pour a glass of wine and get back into the kitchen. I was craving something hearty and comforting that we could eat for a few days. Something that wouldn't remind me too much of Thanksgiving because, frankly, I can't quite gather the steam to start planning for that yet. It was time for a big bowl of chili.
To Talk Porridge
Porridge is not the sexiest of breakfasts, it's true. It doesn't have a stylish name like strata or shakshuka, and it doesn't have perfectly domed tops like your favorite fruity muffin. It doesn't crumble into delightful bits like a good scone nor does it fall into buttery shards like a well-made croissant. But when you wake up and it's 17 degrees outside (as it has been, give or take a few, for the last week), there's nothing that satisfies like a bowl of porridge or oatmeal. It's warm and hearty and can be made sweet or savory with any number of toppings. The problem? Over the years, it's gotten a bad rap as gluey or gummy or just downright boring or dutiful -- and it's because not everyone knows the secrets to making a great pot of warm morning cereal. So let's talk porridge (also: my cookbook comes out this month! So let's take a peek inside, shall we?)
Anna
Ooh! I was planning to make a squash/pumpkin pie tomorrow and this recipe looks great. We are starting a pie on half birthdays tradition and my daughter just turned 6 months old. She won't be eating the pie, but we only the the tiniest excuse to make one for the rest of the family. I'm excited to try baking with kamut!
Nick
Beautiful pie Megan! I love BRM flours. :)
megang
Thank you, Nick!
Stacy
Whole grain pie cookbook??? I'm just sayin'... This looks delicious. xoxo
megang
NOT a crazy idea! xox
Anne
yes, whole grain pies book. I was thinking the same thing...!
(Related - your steel cut oats are now a weekly go-to round here! We call them porridge & eat them with goldilocks.)
Alexandra
Great post, love it! I have been looking for kamut flour but even on Bob Red Mills it is sold out. Is there a similar substitute for the flour? Thank you, I'd really appreciate it!
megang
Oh shoot, Alexandra. Sorry to hear it! I would use spelt flour if I were you - it will act similarly. The color and flavor will be a little different, but I think it'll still be really delicious. The other alternative, if you have a flour mill or a fancy blender like a Vitamix is to grind down kamut berries into flour ... but if that sounds like a headache: spelt flour! Enjoy!