Presidential Pie

A numbered pi plate helps you slice this pie for maximum effect.

Approximately four years ago, then candidate Obama challenged a crowd to produce a sweet potato pie that is better than his mother-in-law's. There were no takers. This is not a sincere attempt to win, although it does represent all of the lessons learned in five years of weekly pie making. Indeed, your pie maker doubts that his President is impolitic enough to choose any stranger's pie over his mother in law's, especially since she lives in the White House. No one would hold fair contest in those conditions unless they were epically bad at relationships, and would have trouble securing his party's nomination, much less the Presidency.

The story of this effort begins with pie crust dough that had been left in the refrigerator for about a week. This has little impact of flavor, but does tend to activate more of the gluten in the flour, so you have to be careful not to handle it too much lest it become tougher than an aluminum pie plate. Turns out the crust will shrink quite a bit, although this is not a problem if you make an upstanding ridge. It's a serious problem if you try to make a checkerboard crust for a Hoosier Sugar Cream Pie. The net result is that 1/3 of the filling from Ken's Sugar Cream Pie had to be left in the pot.

From that mistake, the Presidential Pie was born:

While the crust is shrinking pre-baking, place a pan with

3 sweet potatoes, peeled and diced

to soak in the extra heat. Once they are tender, about 2 crusts worth of pre-baking, pull them out and scoop 2 cups into a food processor and reduce the oven temperature to 350F. Add

2 eggs

3/4 cup whole milk

2/3 cup light brown sugar

3/4 t ground ginger

3/4 t ground nutmet

4 freshly ground cloves.

Adjust spice amounts depending on their age; these amounts are too much for newly purchased spices.

Process the mix until there are only split-pea sized pieces of sweet potato. Around the outer edge of the partially pre-baked crust, place

8 dried apricots

and in the middle, arrange a circle of

8 preserved figs

Pour the mix into a partially pre-baked crust (with an upstanding ridge!) and bake until the center only jiggles a little bit, roughly 45 min. Once the pie is out of the oven and cool enough to touch, scoop about

1/2 whole milk yogurt

into the leftover Sugar Cream Pie filling over low/medium heat, stirring continuously until it has a yogurt-like texture. Pour and spoon this over the mostly-cooled pie and then let sit over night.