Sweet Potato Casserole Ingredients: Topping:
3 Cups Mashed sweet potatoes ½ Stick Butter/margarine–somewhat softened
1 Stick Butter/margarine ½ Cup Light Brown Sugar
3/4 Cup Granulated Sugar 1/3 Cup Flour
1 tsp Vanilla ½ Cup Chopped pecans
Potato preparation:
Purchase: 6 Medium large sweet potatoes.
Try to keep them uniform somewhat in width. This is harder to do than you think. Depending on size you may even need eight; then again, 6 may be more than enough. You are wanting the cooked, mashed/processed sweet potatoes to be at least 3 cups if not more.
Bring water in a large deep pan to boil [the 6 qt all-clad you use for chili would be good]. While the water is getting hot, thoroughly was each sweet potato. Do not peel. If there appears to be a bad spot or ends are ugly, trim them. Place the washed whole sweet potatoes in the hot to boiling water and cook until fork tender. This can take upwards of 30 to 45 minutes or so. When they are easily pierced with no resistance by a fork, remove the sweet potatoes , placing them in a bowl to let them cool. Pour out the water and wash the pan and put away..... At this point, you can either place them in the refrigerator to work on them the next day or wait an hour or two, until they’re cool enough to handle.
When you are ready, peel the sweet potatoes. This is easy as the skins readily slide off if the potatoes are done enough. Place the peeled sweet potatoes in your food processor and pulse chop them until smooth. You don’t want them pureed nor liquified–just smooth. If they are a little lumpy, that is okay as you will do a little more processing when you add the other ingredients.
Casserole preparation:
Butter or grease a 2 quart casserole dish. I prefer a shallow dish with more surface than a deep dish. You can use Corningware, Pyrex or some other oven proof dish.
To the processed sweet potatoes, add the butter, sugar and vanilla. Pulse process just a couple or so pulses until blended in. Empty the potato mixture into the casserole dish, spreading evenly.
Topping preparation:
In a medium bowl, using a spoon, put all topping ingredients together, and mix. You can even use your fingers if you wish. You could probably even put on waxed paper or paper plate to save dirtying a dish. It is like a fruit crisp or crumb topping.
Sprinkle topping evenly over top of sweet potato mixture.
Freezing:
At this point, you can cover the casserole dish tightly with saran wrap and place in a 2 gallon size freezer bag and freeze until ready to use.
Thawing:
Just take out of the freezer in the morning and let sit on a counter for a couple of hours or so. If you have used a Pyrex dish or other non-freezer to oven dish, you need to thaw for sure.
Baking
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. And bake for 25 to 35 minutes until topping is beginning to brown and contents are fully heated.
Serve: Warm or cold.
Note: A little fluctuation in the amount of sweet potatoes, butter, vanilla, pecans, etc. doesn’t really hurt. You can add ½ teaspoon salt or even beat 2 eggs with ½ Cup milk and reduce the butter to ½ stick for the casserole. I usually don’t do this, but you can.
L, GMZ