Sweet Potato Casserole

Thanksgiving is just around the corner (says the girl who sent out invites in July)! This is my favorite holiday but lately I've noticed the meaning behind it has gotten lost and muted. Thanksgiving represents loved loves, family, friends, and gratitude. It allows for us a chance to come together and celebrate in good health, with good company. It gives us a time to reflect and count our blessings.

This year we are preparing a strictly plant-based Thanksgiving and our menu is beyond extensive. It's important to me to expose others to gourmet plant-based foods this holiday, and honestly, it is not the end of the world to give up meat for 5 hours for one day of one year. I have about four days of prep work alone for the menu, but with my Dad (not a good cook but great under instruction) as my sous-chef, we will put out the best damn Thanksgiving these 21 guests ever had.

And honestly, it would just be wrong to come together to celebrate these things, talk about irony, at the expensive of others, (ie: intolerable and unacceptable treatment of animals raised for food production, the mass environmental destruction it takes to raise said animals, the rights of the small farmer which have been stripped away to keep up with the demands of the meat industry to keep production high and costs low, must I continue?).

With all that said, this is the sweet potato casserole dish I will be making this year. It's got a sweet crunchy topping with the underneath perfectly spiced.

4 large sweet potatoes, cooked (I baked them, you can boil them if you prefer)
2 tablespoons plant-based butter
1/4 cup soy, almond or coconut milk
1/4 cup orange juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Topping:
1/4 cup margarine
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup AP flour (I used chickpea flour to make it GF)
3/4 cups chopped pecans
2 tablespoons maple syrup

Preheat your oven to 350° F. Cut your sweet potatoes in half and scoop out the flesh, discard the skins. In a bowl whip together the potato flesh, plant-based butter, plant-based milk, orange juice, vanilla extract, maple syrup, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon until smooth. Pour into a greased casserole dish. In a small bowl mix together the topping ingredients and then spoon it over the casserole. Bake for 35 minutes, serve warm. 

For Thanksgiving I always say 1/3 of a sweet potato per person when calculating how much casserole to make. At least that's how I figure, we always have so many dishes that everyone just takes a small scoop of everything.

Recipe adapted from Fat Free Vegan