This Autumnal Dessert Is the Perfect Mash-Up of Sweet Potato Pie and Cheesecake

Here in the northern hemisphere, the autumnal equinox marks the beginning of fall. Daylight wanes, the sun travels south for the winter, and pumpkin spice mania slowly descends upon all. Like pumpkins, sweet potatoes are another fixture on the holiday table: We enjoy them boiled, mashed, roasted, fried, and in the American South, in pie.

It’s hard to match a classic like sweet potato pie. Earthy, rich, fragrant, but surprisingly light in texture, it’s the perfect ending to otherwise heavy meals during Thanksgiving and Christmas. Still, sweet potatoes are great for more than just pie. Their sweet, caramel-like aroma and creamy texture lend themselves to desserts like pudding, fudge, cake, and even ice cream. So how about cheesecake? And not just your run-of-the-mill, paltry slice of cheesecake: A huge slab of cheesecake brimming with sweet potato flavor, drenched in caramel sauce just because you can.

The foundations of this cheesecake come from Stella Parks’s iconic recipes for Epic New York Style Cheesecake and Lemon-Ricotta Cheesecake. Instead of goat cheese or ricotta, I substitute fifty percent of the “cheese” in the cheesecake with roasted sweet potatoes. In fact, this is a great place to use frozen roasted sweet potatoes, which are sweeter and more intensely flavored than traditionally roasted or boiled sweet potatoes. In order to blend the cream cheese and sweet potatoes into a seamless mixture, I use a food processor, which keeps the texture uniform and well emulsified, and limits air pockets in the baked cheesecake.

Blending Sweet Potatoes for the Smoothest Texture

Because sweet potatoes are relatively starchy and grainy, it’s important to blend the mixture in the food processor for several minutes. This extended processing isn’t just mixing; it results in a much smoother texture that’s unachievable using a stand mixer. In addition, the bulk of the sweetness in this recipe comes from maple syrup, which improves that smoothness by thinning out the batter slightly as it blends. (The syrup also complements the earthiness of the sweet potatoes in a classic, seasonally appropriate way.)

As with Stella’s lemon-ricotta cheesecake, I found it was best to bake it low and slow at 225°F. This moderate temperature produces a dense cheesecake with a silky, more uniform texture. The cheesecake finishes baking when the center reaches an internal temperature of 155°F, at which point the edges are set but the center is still wobbly.

A Luxurious Finishing Touch

While this cheesecake is delicious in its own right, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to gild the lily, so I top the cheesecake with a generous helping of caramel sauce made with maple syrup and toasted walnuts, which cascades down the sides of the cheesecake. Because maple syrup is mostly sucrose, it has a tendency to recrystallize as it cools if you cook it, turning the sauce grainy and opaque. Using an invert sugar such as light corn syrup or Lyle’s golden syrup helps to curb that effect, and the sauce will stay smooth and glossy. Eaten together, this combination of sweet potato cheesecake and caramel lives up to the standards of any great holiday dessert: It’s comforting, it’s satisfying, it’s somehow nostalgic. And you’ll probably need to take a walk in your sweatpants after finishing it.

November 2021