Grease the pie dish and place the pie crust over it. Gently fit the crust into the pie dish and crimp the edges as you wish.
Refrigerate the pie crust while sweet potatoes are baking. (Or for an hour if you baked sweet potatoes ahead of time.)
To Bake Sweet Potatoes:
Preheat the oven to 400°.
Pierce the sweet potatoes with a fork a couple of times and wrap each one tightly with aluminum foil.
Place wrapped potatoes into a baking sheet and bake for 45-60 minutes until completely tender. Exact time will depend on the thickness of sweet potatoes.
Take them out of the oven and let them cool until you can handle them.
Prebake the crust:
Keep the oven at 400° to prebake the pie crust.
Take the pie crust out of the refrigerator and line it with a sheet of parchment paper (or aluminum foil). You can cut off the long edges of the parchment paper (if using foil, make sure to gently cover and fold over the edges.)
Spread pie baking weights or a pound bag of dried beans over the parchment paper in the pie dish. Gently press to fit the beans or weights evenly throughout. (This will prevent the pie crust from raising and puffing up. Yes it is important!)
Bake pie crust for 15 minutes and take it out. Let it cool until you can handle it and then bring up all four corners of the parchment paper and gently lift it with the beans (or weights) out of the pie crust.
Prepare sweet potato Pie:
Lower the oven temperature to 350°.
Take the skin off the potatoes and place the peeled sweet potatoes into a mixing bowl.
In a bowl, use a potato masher to mash sweet potatoes until completely smooth.
Add in remaining ingredients and use a hand-held blender to blend the filling until smooth.
Pour the pie filling into the prepared pie crust and place the pie dish into the baking sheet.
To keep the pie crust from getting too dark, you can cut 3-4 strips of aluminum foil that are about 2-3 inches wide and gently wrap them around the edge of the pie dish, covering the crust.ORHalf way though the baking, cover the pie dish loosely with a sheet of aluminum foil.
Bake sweet potato pie for 45-50 minutes, until the edges are done but it's still slightly higgle in the center.
Take out and let it cool completely on a wire rack! Once cooled, refrigerate for 2-4 hours.
For Whipped Cream:
Add the cold heavy whipping cream into the cold mixing bowl. Starting at low speed, start whisking, gradually raise to speed to high.
Slowly pour in cinnamon and sugar. Beat until stiff peaks appear (don't walk away far).
Keep air-tights in the refrigerator until ready to use. (Don't make more than a day ahead.)
Video
Notes
Things to remember:
Pre-bake (or blind bake) the pie crust first. This will give you crispy, flaky, baked through crust.
Use fresh sweet potatoes, never canned.
Bake the sweet potatoes! This will give you naturally sweeter potatoes with silkier texture. Boiled sweet potatoes loose a lot of natural sweetness and take on more water.
Use heavy whipping cream, not evaporated milk. Evaporated milk was widely used during and after World War II due to heavy cream shortages. You will get much better results with heavy whipping cream!
Don’t over bake the pie! The pie should be still slightly jiggly in the middle when you pull it out and set it on the counter while cooling. If you over bake it, it will crack from the heat.