You can’t have ham without yams!

This recipe comes to you by way of my boss. She makes this for our holiday party every year and it is ALWAYS a hit. I doctored it up a little with vanilla, cream and cinnamon to give a little more fierceness ; )  but it was still great as it was.  

While doing the meal planning with my friends at work we discussed having mashed potatoes vs sweet potatoes and I was the only one to insist the lunacy of NOT HAVING YAMS with our ham!! I was really passionate about it and realized they were all looking at me like I was crazy, lol. But really, mashed potatoes? Come on….

Ingredients:

• 5 large mashed sweet potatoes (approximately 6 cups)
• 2 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 4 eggs, lightly beaten
• 2 teas. Pure vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cup milk
• 1/4 heavy cream*
• 1 tea. cinnamon
• 1 cup melted butter

 *you can definitely use all (1 ½ c.) milk if you don’t have cream.

Topping:

• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2/3 cup flour
• 2/3 cup melted butter
• 2 cup chopped pecans (one 6 oz. bag.- try to get the pecan halves (instead of pre-chopped) and chop yourself. The closer they are to you cracking them open yourself, the fresher and better. And the lack of uniformity in the pieces gives the dish a real homemade feel in my opinion.)

Preparation:

Boil the potatoes until fork tender. Peel and mash. Combine first 6 ingredients. Pour into a buttered casserole dish. Mix remaining ingredients together and sprinkle over top. Bake at 350° for 30 to 40 minutes, until hot and browned. (I ended up baking mine for an hour because of the depth of my pan (2 inches), so check it and make sure that it’s hot.)

NOTES: I am going to work on cooking for two, but in the meanwhile, this recipe can easily feed 12. Please halve it, lol. Literally, cut the measurements for the entire recipe in half. I have a conversion page in the works and will do my best to make them more suitable for a regular sized family and not the one I grew up in. : )  Additionally, baking the potatoes would have been better because I noticed that my boil water was reddish brown in the end and I was sad b/c I knew that I’d lost some of the good, natural, sweet potato flavor. (However, I did make the mistake of piercing one and it fell open so it could have just been the product of it not having it’s protective skin for the duration of the cooking)

YUMMY! THAT CRUST IS SICK!! No marshmallows needed, Donyale. I promise. ; )