Sweet Potato Pie and I Shut My Mouth

We were invited to a friend's birthday BBQ this weekend which had a "Southern" theme. When we got there we found out the theme was "nixed" so I felt really ridiculous when I showed up with a Sweet Potato Pie! I've never made any Southern dishes before and all I could think of was "Song, song of the south, sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth". So that's what I decided to make.

I'm fairly confident that I've never even eaten Sweet Potato Pie before. Being in Hawaii (aka the land of STRANGE food) there were 4 different types of sweet potatoes/yams at the store: some purple, some orange, some "oriental". We hounded the produce guy, told him what we were making and he set us on the right track with some yams.

I used Alton Brown's recipe from the Food Network website, which also had a great video from Good Eats. Making the pie was pretty uneventful. It included sweet potatoes, dark brown sugar, egg yolks, plain yogurt, nutmeg, and cinnamon, all mixed together and poured into a (frozen, store bought) pie crust. It was topped with pecans and maple syrup. Blah, blah, blah.

So we took it to the party, found out it wasn't "Southern" any longer, and dropped it off on the food table. When it came time for dessert there were literally 6 options: dream cake, banana cream pie, strawberry pie, etc. Mine was the least beautiful and delicious looking!

I was one of 2 or 3 people who actually took a slice and to be honest I was NOT impressed. It was good, not great. I think I expected it to be sweeter like pumpkin pie, OR even better, to actually taste like pumpkin pie! It tasted like sweet potatoes, eh, I don't really like sweet potatoes. I probably won't make it again, but it sure did look purty!