This week's Culinary SOS: Sweet potato pie

Sweet potato pie. (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

December 9, 2012, 9:00 a.m.

This week's Culinary SOS request comes from Ruth L. Brown in Los Angeles:

"A while ago, on a visit to Cleveland, our son took us to eat and drink at the Market Garden Brewery. I believe it is near the interesting Garden Market on the near west side of Cleveland. I ordered the sweet potato pie. It was out of this world! I was glad I had eaten lightly before devouring it."

This is no ordinary sweet potato pie. Creamy mashed sweet potatoes are lightly spiced with nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla paste, and sweetened with a touch of honey, sugar and Muscavado brown sugar — a rich, dark, unfiltered brown sugar — for a wonderful medley of flavors. Not too sweet and not overly spiced. In a word: perfect. This is one pie I'll be making again and again.

Thanks, Ruth! You can find the recipe below.

See more Culinary SOS recipes. If you have a favorite restaurant recipe you'd like to request, email me. I'll do my best to track it down.

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Market Garden Brewery's sweet potato pie

Total time: 2 hours, 20 minutes, plus chilling time for the dough

Servings: 8

Note: Adapted from Market Garden Brewery in Cleveland. Muscavado sugar and vanilla paste are available at cooking and baking supply stores, as well as select gourmet and well-stocked markets, and are available online. To roast sweet potatoes, prick unpeeled whole potatoes with a knife and roast at 375 degrees until a knife pierces easily, about 1 hour, depending on the size of the potatoes. Cool before peeling.

Pie dough

1 1/4 cups (5.3 ounces) flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon sugar

1/2 cup (1 stick) cold butter, diced

1/4 cup ice water

Comments (1)

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12prfctlg at 11:39 PM December 27, 2012

Waaaay too sweet. You said "not too sweet", so I took your word for it, but I was skeptical. The recipe calls for 1.75 cups of sweeteners (muscovado brown sugar, white sugar, and honey). That's a ton of sugar. I would cut it back by 1/2 if I made it again! Also the level of butter is pretty intense, so I would cut back on that, too. The seasoning was fine. I made two pies at once, and it took twice as long for the filling to set.

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