Jamaican Sweet Potato Pudding with Pineapple Sauce

Sweet potatoes and pineapple won September's Crazy Ingredient Challenge poll. Two relatively sweet ingredients and I, the dessert queen, almost made a savoury dish. Oh the horror. I pictured sweet potato cupcakes with a pineapple frosting, piped all perfectly like a sunflower. Perfect piping? Quite a dream. So why no cupcakes? Simple reason. Jamaican sweet potatoes are a bit different from American sweet potatoes. On the outside, the skin is a reddish colour. On the inside, they are white, yellow, or orange. It's not easy to find the orange ones in my area. The water content is also different. American sweet potatoes are WET compared to ours. With that in mind, I didn't want to try them in cupcakes. I couldn't think of another dessert so I decided to go savoury

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But then I remembered that there is one way that we do use sweet potatoes in dessert. And that's in a sweet potato pudding. The sweet potato is grated - a good a workout for the arm - and then combined with spices, coconut milk and a little flour. Some add rum, cornmeal, and other tubers too. Traditionally, this would be baked over coals and with coals piled on top too. "Hell at the top and hell at the bottom."

This was my second time making sweet potato pudding. The first time, I used American sweet potatoes and that pudding probably took as long as the Thanksgiving turkey to bake. Silly me forgot that the American sweet potatoes had a higher water content and did not compensate. It still tasted good though - just not as firm. If you do try with American sweet potatoes, I honestly cannot tell you how much liquid to use. I'd have to get some and try again. You can find the variety of sweet potatoes that we have here in an international supermarket. In the Cuban supermarkets in Miami, they are labelled "boniato". Other places call them to "batata" and Trudy says she finds them labelled as "Japanese sweet potatoes".

Remember to look at the other sweet potato and pineapple creations below.

Jamaican Sweet Potato Pudding with Pineapple Sauce

Ingredients
Pudding
900 grams sweet potato
200 grams brown sugar
120 grams flour
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
700 ml coconut milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon browning (optional)
Sauce
1 20 ounce can pineapple pieces
2 tablespoons cornstarch
4 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
Maraschino cherries, chopped
splash of rum


Directions

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease a 9" pan and line it with parchment paper.

Grate or process the sweet potatoes and set them aside. In another bowl, mix together sugar, flour, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Toss in the sweet potatoes until they are coated. Pour in the coconut milk, vanilla, and browning (if using). Stir until combined.

Bake 45 minutes or until the pudding is set.

For the pineapple sauce, drain the pineapple and reserve 3/4 cup of liquid. Whisk together the liquid with the cornstarch until well dissolved. In a small saucepan, melt the butter and then ad the sugar and cornstarch mixture. Keep stirring! Let the mixture boil for one minute and then add the pineapple pieces and cherries. Keep stirring until the fruit is warm then remove from the heat and stir in a splash or three of rum.

Serve over pudding.

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