Sweet Potato Souffle

Posted by Judy | Bebe Love Okazu on December 3, 2010 in Blog, Family Favorites, Special Occasions, Traditional Holidays, Vegetables & Vegetarian | 13 comments

I know I’ve said this quite a few times in recent weeks, but I LOVE this time of the year! Thanksgiving for us is always very busy and sometimes even just a little hectic, but it’s still one of my favorite holidays. In one day, we celebrate with both sides of our family, which means packing (lots of food and baby gear) and driving (across counties, around town, and to the supermarket for forgotten items), but what I always cherish and remember the most is the time spent with our wonderful family enjoying delicious food – – – all day long!

The remainder of our long weekend was happily spent eating Thanksgiving leftovers and relaxing. I still wasn’t feeling 100% after my bout with bronchitis, and given the chilly weather it was nice to spend quiet time indoors. When I was much younger, I enjoyed the craziness of Black Friday, but over the years, I started shopping earlier and earlier, picking up gifts when I saw something that I knew someone would enjoy, and ultimately had most of my holiday shopping complete before Thanksgiving. Now, I rarely venture out to holiday shop, and I mostly take advantage of online shopping and free shipping. It’s so much easier shopping online from the comfort of my home while Bebe E entertains herself. As those of you with little ones might agree, it’s challenging shopping with babies or little kids in tow! By Sunday, I was 90% done with our holiday shopping (no, I am not a believer of “Cyber Monday”) and I was feeling better so we took a short walk along Downtown Disney. Bebe E was the proud and very happy recipient of two buttons she received from a Disney staffer.

The bottom right photo was taken on Thanksgiving. Bebe E is modeling her new hairstyle, compliments of Big Onechan.

One of the side dishes I make every year is a sweet potato souffle. I’ve been making this for at least 10 years. I’m not sure where I picked-up the recipe and didn’t note the source, but I’m fairly certain it’s something I discovered while watching the Food Network. The biggest changes I made to the recipe were cutting the amount of sugar, but adding a lot of marshmallows.

As a child I didn’t care for, what my parents and grandparents referred to as, yams. Quite a while ago, in a baby food post for sweet potatoes, I researched the difference between yams and sweet potatoes. While I’ve often used the term yam and sweet potato interchangeably, sweet potatoes are often mistaken for yams and are apparently not the same. (More on this topic found here.) Anyway, back then my Mom and Bachan (my paternal grandmother whose since passed on) would either bake or steam “yams” and serve them plain. My brother and I were never fans of this, so when I started cooking our family’s Thanksgiving meal, I found a sweet potato souffle recipe that I knew everyone would enjoy.

Sweet Potato Souffle

serves 8 -10

• 3 cups mashed sweet potatoes (about 4 or 5 medium sweet potatoes)
• 1/2 cup white granulated sugar (original recipe calls for 3/4 cup white sugar)
• 1/3 cup butter, softened
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup low-fat milk
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• Lots of large puffy marshmallows
• Cooking spray

1.  Wash sweet potatoes and slice into large chunks. Using a large steamer, cook sweet potatoes for about 30 minutes or until tender. I never time the steaming process because I’m usually prepping other dishes and not really paying attention since it’s hard to ruin steamed sweet potatoes, but I usually keep the heat on medium to medium-high and these likely steamed for up to 45 minutes.

I use a chopstick to check the tenderness of the sweet potatoes. These were extremely soft.

2.  Allow the sweet potatoes to cool. Remove skin from the potatoes. They should peel off with very little effort. Discard skin and combine the steamed sweet potatoes with the white sugar, soft butter, beaten eggs, vanilla and milk. I used to mix everything by hand but recently I’ve been using my stand mixer since it’s easier.

3.  Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray 2 quart oven proof baking dish with Pam or other cooking spray. Spoon souffle mixture into dish and bake  30 to 35 minutes. The texture of the sweet potato souffle is creamy and slightly fluffy.

This is a photo of the baked souffle. It doesn’t look drastically different from it’s pre-baked state.

4.  Remove cooked sweet potato souffle from the oven and top with large marshmallows, then broil for 3 to 5 minutes until marshmallows are golden.

I should mention that my brother’s wife did a great job with the marshmallows. She probably added more than I normally would, and for this, our entire family, especially Big Onechan, was thankful. We’ll have to carry this new tradition to our next Thanksgiving meal.

Serve and enjoy!!!

Our sweet potato souffle is the only Thanksgiving side dish I’ll be posting. I decided to wait to post our simple cream corn until Christmas since I always make this to compliment our lunch, so stay tuned.

Next year, per my brother’s request, I will go back to making homemade stuffing. This year our Mom used Stove Top to make things easy on her (and me) and we all realized that we missed our usual homemade stuffing. OK, I admit that I was trying to make one less dish this year since I usually spend the entire day before Thanksgiving prepping and its hard when I don’t have anyone to entertain Bebe E, but I’ll stop making excuses. I take responsibility for asking my Mom to make Stove Top, so stay tuned – – – a year from now – – – for our homemade stuffing.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Cheers,

Judy | bebe mama