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
Ingredients
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.
Video
Notes
Nutrition Label
Nutrition
If you’d like to save this recipe for later, please save the below image in Pinterest. Feel free to tag me in social media if you made the recipe:)
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Looks like such a playful dish, so no doubt your kids loved it ❤️
This is a similar recipe to one that my Nana used to make. It’s delicious! Thanks for sharing the recipe as I do not have exact measurements to my Nana’s.
Aww thank you so much!!! Feel free to tweak the quantities and ingredients until you get it exactly how your Nana used to make it.
I never wrote recipes down when i lived back home and now i wish i had!!
This looks delicious I m gonna try this asap!!
Boy, this recipe take me back! Yum!
This looks absolutely yummy. will give it a try during this Thanksgiving period
Looks amazing! I’m going to make this for thanksgiving!
It’s delicious.. I’m going to try this!
Thank you Shirin, I appreciate it:)
I’ll try this one night this week. Great recipe.
Thank you Phil!!!
Oh gosh! That looks delicious. It’s also something that my wife ans I could try out and make here in the Philippines.
Thank you Neil:))). You won’t regret it!! It’s delicious.
this is great !!
I´m gonna try it today! thank you
Thank you Debora:)). Hope you like it!!