Coconut and Pineapple Mashed Sweet Potato (aka Yam) Casserole

A typical Thanksgiving dish is a sweet potato casserole made with mashed and spiced sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows and then baked. I’ve been making this variant using coconut and pineapple for topping (as well as coconut cream inside) for a few years. I’m doing it again this year, so I thought I’d post the recipe somewhere public.

Ingredients:

• 3 large orange sweet potatoes (like garnet). I do mean large.
• 1 package solid coconut cream mixed up in a cup or so of water (example).
• 1/2 cup (or more if you like it sweeter) maple syrup (or other preferably liquid sweetener you prefer such as honey)
• 1-2 teaspoons ground cinnamon (I ground fresh from sticks)
• 1/2 teaspoon (or more) ground nutmeg (fresh ground)
• 1/2 teaspoon (or more) ground all-spice (fresh)
• 1/2 teaspoon (or more) ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon (or more) ground coriander seeds
• 1-2 cups dried coconut flakes
• 1 pineapple cut up into 1 centimeter by 2 centimeter chunks or 1-2 cans of pineapple chunks that size

Steps:

1. Peel sweet potatoes and cut up into smaller chunks. Boil until soft. Drain.
2. Mash sweet potatoes with the reconstituted coconut cream, maple syrup and spices while still warm and place into a large casserole dish (or just mash in the dish like I did). Make sure it’s thoroughly mixed (no one wants a huge bite of clove except me).
3. Cover the top with a thin layer of coconut flakes
4. Cover that over with a solid layer of pineapple chunks.
5. Just before baking, cover with rest of coconut flakes.
6. Bake in 350F oven, uncovered, for 30-45 minutes (depending on how cool it got before baking).
7. NOM. NOM.

Possible variations I’ve considered:

• A heck of a lot more spice. I’m always wary of adding too much since these can be very strong spices.
• We cut up a fresh pineapple for this, but if you used canned, you could drain some of the water and mix into the mash as substitue for some of the syrup or in addition.
• Adding chunks of pineapple or bigger chunks of coconut throughout the mash.
• Crazy layering: layer of mash, pineapple plus coconut layer, more mash, etc. Probably wouldn’t hold together though visibly and is probably equivalent to just adding pineapple and coconut to the mash.
• Put casserole into small individual serving size dishes.