One-Hour Sweet Potato Pudding Recipe

Sweet potato pudding is a popular dessert in the Caribbean reminiscent of a sweet potato casserole. Another name for the dessert is Jamaican sweet potato pudding—a version that is more of a sweet potato pie, as it’s sliceable. Regardless of the consistency you prefer, you can cook your sweet potato mixture in a baking dish and top it with classic casserole toppings like marshmallows or nuts.

In the United States, people often use the terms sweet potato and yam interchangeably, although they are not technically the same ingredient. Classic Jamaican sweet potato pudding recipes use a vegetable called batata—a food that is more similar to a yam, based on the descriptions of tubers with light-colored flesh and a reddish skin. Adaptive recipes can use a sweet potato. In the US, sweet potato casserole is usually a side dish, while sweet potato pie is usually a dessert. In Jamaica, sweet potato pudding is a dessert.

A basic Caribbean sweet potato pudding recipe requires a few main ingredients plus seasonings, making it a straightforward dessert. Try these suggestions to play around with ingredients and baking styles while still retaining the traditional taste and texture:

1. 1. Add savory flavors. Most Jamaican sweet potato puddings are sweet desserts; however, there are ways to add more savory ingredients. You can serve a savory sweet potato pudding as a side dish alongside holiday dinner elements like turkey or stuffing. Add sage or rosemary to the filling and cut back on the sugar slightly. Additionally, try topping the pudding with a breadcrumb mixture instead of a sweet topping.
2. 2. Put the pudding in a pie crust. For a nontraditional approach, make a classic pastry pie crust. Add coconut oil to complement the other flavors in the pudding and then bake the pudding as a classic pie.
3. 3. Top the pudding with something sweet. Like with other sweet potato desserts, you can enhance a sweet potato pudding with toppings. Try topping your dish with sweetened whipped cream, sweet and spiced cream cheese, a scoop of ice cream, pecans, brown sugar, maple syrup, raisins, melted butter, or some combination.
4. 4. Use any type of sweet potato. Traditional Caribbean sweet potato pudding uses batata, which translates to “sweet potato” but has a whiter flesh and redder skin. If those are difficult to find, you can use regular sweet potatoes or even yams. They are all firm and will produce similar results in the final product.
5. 5. Use canned coconut milk. Many Caribbean sweet potato recipes are dairy-free and use coconut milk instead of regular milk. Traditionally, the milk comes from a whole coconut, but you can use canned coconut instead.
6. 6. Use a food processor. Traditional recipes use grated sweet potato that you slice on a regular box grater. Alternatively, you can cut the sweet potato into cubes and pulse the chunks in a food processor until they are coarsely chopped. Avoid pulverizing the mixture to the consistency of a purée if you want the final product to be a little chunkier.