By Eric Griffey
Photography by Brooks Burris
Pastry chef and Chef Jess Bakes owner Jessica Castañeda learned to make sweet potato pie in a house where family occupied nearly every floor. In the St. Paul fourplex where she spent her earliest years, her grandmother lived in one apartment, her parents and siblings in another, and uncles and cousins elsewhere in the building. Family was close enough to hear moving overhead.
Thanksgiving required little discussion about where to gather.
“Big Mom’s house was where you met,” Castañeda says. “No other option.” Her grandmother’s cooking included fried chicken, fried catfish, pound cake and the sweet potato pie she made a few times a year. The pie was special partly because it was occasional, but also because Castañeda learned to make it beside her. It was among her first lessons in baking, taught by someone whose kitchen supplied much of the food and familiarity of childhood.
The version she makes today carries that history, along with everything she has learned since.
“This is not Big Mom’s sweet potato pie,” she says.
Her grandmother whisked the filling together. Castañeda uses a blender, producing the silky texture she prefers, and brings her own balance of spices and citrus to the recipe. Years of professional technique have changed the result without displacing the person who introduced her to it.
“I’ve taken all those years of education and technique,” she says, “and flavors and all of that and kind of made it my own thing meets what she used to make.”
Cooking was already part of the family’s livelihood. Her parents operated a soul food truck in the 1990s, when she was small enough to watch the work before she could contribute much to it.
Her father’s family had Southern roots, and those traditions remained present in their Minnesota home.
By 17, she was attending culinary school and working in Minneapolis restaurants. Her program taught savory cooking alongside baking, a breadth she still appreciates.
“I never really wanted to just do sweets,” she says.
After moving to North Texas in 2015, she built a career that included Kate Weiser Chocolate, Black Rooster Bakery, Gemma and Melt Ice Creams. In early 2020, she became executive chef at the cafe at Bonton Farms in Dallas, taking on her first executive chef position just as the pandemic began disrupting the industry.
Today, Chef Jess Bakes brings those accumulated skills into a business small enough for her to shape around the work she wants to do. Custom cakes are its financial mainstay, decorated with the elaborate swirls, flowers and garden-inspired designs that have earned her a devoted following. But the cakes tell only part of the story.
She makes sourdough bread for customers to collect from her porch. She holds pop-ups at neighborhood coffee shops, prepares private dinners and caters events with small, carefully composed bites. Her work can turn up at an art release or in a menu developed for another business. At the Oaks Coffee House, where she took on her first chef consulting job, she created the breakfast and lunch menu.
The range gives her room to keep cooking beyond the orders for which she is best known.
“It’s like a really small kind of gathering of my skillset over the years,” she says, “but boiled down to what I actually want to do now.”
Instagram serves as a changing calendar of bread pickups, cakes, pop-ups and other opportunities to try her food. Thanksgiving pies have been part of her offerings for the past four years, and she expects to offer them again this season, with details to come through Chef Jess Bakes.
At home, Thanksgiving remains the holiday her family takes most seriously, particularly when it comes to preserving the dishes everyone expects. Turkey now appears in three forms: smoked by her husband, fried by her stepfather and roasted in the oven. Different cooks contribute different skills to a meal whose essentials remain familiar.
“For the last 34 years of my life,” she says, “that meal is always the most beloved.”
Her sweet potato pie belongs to that meal even as she has made it her own. The filling is smoother now. The seasoning reflects her taste. But the first lesson still belongs to her grandmother, in the house where everyone knew they would meet for Thanksgiving.
Jessica Castañeda’s Roasted Sweet Potato Pie
Yield: One 9-inch pie
Ingredients
- 1 single butter pie crust, homemade or store-bought
- 2 pounds whole sweet potatoes (2 cups roasted puree needed)
- 1 cup light brown sugar
- 2 large eggs, at room temperature
- ¼ cup heavy cream
- 2 tablespoons fresh orange juice (about ½ orange)
- ½ teaspoon orange zest (about ½ orange)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ground ginger
- Pinch freshly ground nutmeg
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
Directions
- Heat the oven to 400°F. Wash and dry the sweet potatoes and place on a foil- or parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake for 1–1½ hours, or longer for large potatoes, until very tender and a knife meets no resistance. Cool until comfortable to handle, halve and scoop out the flesh. Measure 2 cups and set aside to cool.
- Reduce the oven temperature to 375°F and position a rack in the bottom third. Line the chilled pie crust with parchment, extending up the sides, and fill with pie weights or dried beans. See the crust note below for pre-shaped frozen crusts.
- Blind bake for 24–28 minutes, until the sides are matte and hold their shape. Remove the parchment and weights, then bake about 5 minutes more, until the bottom is dry and the crust is light golden. Let cool on the pan while preparing the filling.
- Combine the cooled sweet potato puree and all remaining filling ingredients in a blender or food processor. Blend until very smooth and well combined without overwhipping.
- Pour the filling into the partially baked crust and smooth the top. Bake for 15 minutes at 375°F. Reduce the temperature to 350°F and bake 30–40 minutes more, until the filling is puffed and the center barely wobbles when gently shaken.
- Turn off the oven and crack the door. Let the pie cool in the oven for 15 minutes to help prevent cracking. Remove and cool completely on a wire rack.
- Once cool, wrap well and refrigerate for up to 3 days. Serve chilled or let stand at room temperature for 1 hour before serving. Optional toppings include whipped cream, crème fraîche, vanilla ice cream or caramelized pepitas.
Notes
Crust: Homemade dough should be rolled, crimped, and well chilled before blind baking. Castañeda prefers freezing the shaped crust to help it retain its shape. Her recipe says to omit blind baking for a pre-shaped frozen grocery-store crust, which bakes faster than a homemade butter crust.
Sweet potatoes: Canned sweet potato may be substituted, though roasting and pureeing fresh potatoes is preferred. Roast and puree a day ahead, then refrigerate until ready to bake.
JESSICA CASTAÑEDA’S RESTAURANT
Chef Jess Bakes
Fort Worth cottage bakery;
pickup arranged when ordering
chefjessbakes.com
@chefjessbakes
[email protected]