Sweet Potato Casserole with Pecans and Marshmallows Topping (Thanksgiving)

Thanksgiving is my  favorite holiday of the year. I love hosting and cooking all the dishes from scratch. Even on years when we’re not the ones hosting, I end up preparing few dishes to take over. Usually my Sweet Potato Casserole is in high demand, everyone is always asking if I’m going to make it for Thanksgiving dinner.

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Feeling Nostalgic & Grateful During This Holiday!

When I cook Thanksgiving dinner, I think of all our family spread out around the world. We usually get lucky if some of them get to visit at one point or another. I don’t remember a year when everyone was visiting at the same time. I hope one day we’ll get to accomplish that! My kids grandparents live in 3 other countries and I hope one day my kids can celebrate Thanksgiving with all of them. Furthermore, I also think of when my own kids will be grown up and they will maybe be studying in some other city. I’m hoping my cooking and the Thanksgiving memories will bring them home during this holiday. I dream of them calling and asking: Mom, will you cook this or that for me? Right now, I’m enjoying all the time I can with them and I’m grateful for my family!

When I first started cooking for Thanksgiving dinner over a decade ago, I didn’t know what recipes to use and didn’t have any help from mom or grandma. As most of you know, I didn’t grow up in US. So I bought several cooking magazines that line up the check out lane in my grocery store and started with those. I was determined to have a proper & traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Now that I think about it, I should maybe write a post with just my mishaps and accidents during those first few years:). Each year I tweaked and changed ingredients and quantities, took in consideration likes and dislikes from my family and several years ago I came up with this Sweet Potato Casserole and locked the recipe down:).

Sweet Potato Casserole Toppings

So I didn’t know that people can discuss the toppings of this casserole for hours, but apparently they can. I figured that out in one Thanksgiving dinner where we had a lot of family and friends over. It started simple, oh what do you put in the topping? And everyone started sharing how their sweet potato casserole looks like. Some like pecans but no marshmallows, some the other way around. Then it’s a whole different discussion if you just dot some marshmallows around or put a whole layer of them. As you can see, mine is covered in marshmallows because my son likes to pick on it shshshshhhhhhhh!! Then do you add oats, flour, what type of sugar?

Sweet Potato Casserole With Pecans and Marshmallows Recipe Notes

The sweet potato casserole sounds difficult to make, maybe because there are a lot of ingredients. However, I think it’s an easy recipe because as long as you put the filling & topping together, then bake you’re done. Make it easier on yourself by putting the ingredients and quantities out beforehand.

See below 2 pictures that might help with visualizing ingredients for filling and topping.

Then the ingredients for the topping are shown below:

I usually add marshmallows the last 10 minutes when the sweet potato casserole is baking. So if you don’t like marshmallows at all, you can leave them out. Then the sweet potato casserole will look this (not baked yet):

Sweet Potato Casserole with Pecans and Marshmallows

Sonila

This sweet potato casserole is my family’s favorite side dish for Thanksgiving and I hope it will continue to be for years to come. I use a topping that has both pecans and marshmallows.

5 from 5 votes

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Prep Time 15 mins

Cook Time 1 hr 30 mins

Total Time 1 hr 45 mins

Course Side Dish

Cuisine American

Servings 8 people

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

Filling

• 4 big sweet potatoes (or 6 medium ones) about 2.5 lbs
• 5 tbsps ghee butter works too
• 2 eggs
• 0.5 cups heavy cream
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract
• 1.5 tsp cinammon
• 0.5 tsp nutmeg
• 0.5 tsp salt
• ⅔ cups chopped pecans
• 6 tbsps brown sugar add more if you like it sweeter

Topping

• 2 cups pecans halves
• 4 tbsps brown sugar
• 0.5 cups flour
• 4 tbsps ghee butter works too
• 1.5 cups mini marshmallows

Instructions

 

• Bake sweet potatoes for an hour in 425 degrees. I tend to use the toaster oven for this so i can still have access to the oven for the other Thanksgiving dishes I’m cooking simultaneously. Bake until you can easily pierce the sweet potatoes with a fork.
• Let them cool down. Once you can handle them with your hands, cut the sweet potatoes in half and then use a spoon to scoop the soft part out. Put it all in a deep bowl.
• Beat the eggs lightly and pour it over the sweet potatoes. Add the heavy cream, brown sugar, vanilla extract, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, melted ghee and chopped pecans. Mix it all well with a spoon. You can use a mixer if you like the filling to be smoother, i like to have smaller chunks of the potatoes here and there so that’s why i manually mix it all up.
• Place the filling in a baking dish. My favorites are a glass baking dish or a ceramic white one which looks beautiful in the table when having guests over.

Topping

• Place the pecans in a shallow bowl. I like them to be in halves for the topping but feel free to chop them up if you like smaller pieces. Add the brown sugar, flour, butter or ghee and mix them all up. Spread this thick layer over the filling. Decorate with the desired amount of marshmallows on top. 
• Bake for about 30-40 minutes at 350 degrees. If you don’t like the marshmallows to get too dark, feel free to cover with foil for part of the baking.

Notes

I have replaced the flour with quick oats occasionally for the topping and I really like it but my kids don’t so I continue to use flour. 

Keyword best Thanksgiving side dish, pecan and marshmallows topping, sweet potato casserole, Thankgiving side dish, Thankgiving sweet potato casserole

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Other Thanksgiving Recipes:

• Homemade Cranberry Sauce
• Beets, Sweet Potatoes Salad
• Phyllo Shells Sweet Potato Bites