Sweet Potatoes, Peanuts and Apples: Three Pies I Made For Thanksgiving

Sweet potatoes, apples and peanuts were the theme for this Thanksgiving! A little tried and true and a little… shall we say experimental.

I love sweet potatoes in any form. And I’ve made sweet potato pie before, but never sliced sweet potato pie. I liked the idea that had more of a hearty apple pie texture. So, I gave it a try and it turned out really well. The key is to really flavor your sweet potatoes to taste. And I like mine with lots of cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla and the like.

Here are some of the pics.

Old-Fashioned Sliced Sweet Potato Pie

I used this recipe from the North Carolina Sweet Potato Association… with a few tweaks. Like I said earlier. I eyeball the ingredients and keep tasting the sweet potatoes until I get them just right. I also didn’t use the called for “pumpkin pie” spice because we’re not making pumpkin pies, now are we? 🙂 I used traditional spices used to flavor sweet potato casserole and it came out perfectly. Oh yes – I added a splash or three of Fireball! I LOVE using this spicy sweet liqueur in my baking. Anyway… this recipe goes into my annual Thanksgiving rotation.

Southern Peanut Pie

I’m from the south, and I’d never heard of a peanut pie. Neither had my parents who also grew up in North Carolina. BUT I was on the search for desserts for Thanksgiving using local harvest flavors. Peanuts are a popular fall crop, and I found a pie recipe I wanted to try.

I love peanut butter anything. So while my mother was a little recipe of this pie. I was not. This is the result!

I also added a splash of salted caramel bourbon for extra flavor. I try to use local ingredients as much as possible, and this whiskey came from a Bogue Sound, a distillery near Emerald Isle, NC. (This bourbon was also delightful to drink neat.) It was very good. Basically, it was like a pecan pie except with peanuts. I don’t know that I need this pie in my life again. But I’m definitely glad I made it at least once. And if you love peanuts, this just might be your favorite new pie. I wish I could give you guys a perfect recipe but I really used a pecan pie as the basic but swapped maple syrup for karo. I will get around to posting the recipe though. So stay tuned!

Apple Cider Hand Pies

I also wanted to try my hand (no pun intended) at making hand pies. Honestly, after making the two previous pies I was burned out on making pies. But I’d purchased ALL OF THESE apples for pies, and I had an apple cider pie recipe I was eager to try. So I made these really easy-peasy cute apple hand pies. Baked not fried.

They were delicious and my kids loved these the most out of the three pies I made. In fact my picky eaters refused to even try sweet potatoes or peanuts (don’t ask. grrrr). But the apple pies were hand down a favorite. And I discovered that heated up in the oven the next morning made a yummy breakfast. I will definitely make these again. Here is the apple cider pie recipe I tweaked.

All photos courtesy of Esme Addison.