The Pie That Made Kardea Brown Fall In Love With Desserts

Kardea Brown is a beloved Food Network star known for serving up a sunny attitude, and deliciously sweet and savory dishes. Long before the South Carolinian chef of Gullah/Geechee descent ever stepped into the role of "Delicious Miss Brown," she was sharpening her sweet tooth in her youth, shaping a lifetime love of desserts.

Ms. Brown was co-hosting a wickedly delectable Halloween Sweets & Treats event at the 2024 New York City Wine & Food Festival, when we caught up with her to ask what dessert sparked her passion for sweets. The answer came quickly, as Brown happily offered up "My grandmother's sweet potato pie." She added, "It is probably one of the only things that she bakes, in between that and her bread pudding that she makes for the holidays." That sweet potato pie is not only a lasting food memory for Brown, it's also a lingering one too, as she admitted: "She bakes it so well and it's something that just ... I can taste it in my mouth as I'm talking to you."

In retrospect, it's no surprise that Kardea Brown's culinary career began with her grandmother's sweet potato pie. She has since happily shared more recipes featuring like-minded desserts, from mini sweet potato pies to a sweet potato pone that makes her want to dance. Brown has brought familial generations together by layering her grandmother's sweet potato pie on top of her own New York style cheesecake recipe for quite the dynamic duo of a dessert. She's even found a creative way to use leftover sweet potato pie filling – mixing it into cornbread.

Before embarking on your own culinary explorations with sweet potatoes, it's important to know how to pick the best of sweet potatoes at the store. Once you have your nice and firm tubers, free of cracks, in hand, be sure to keep them in a safe place before cooking. One of the best options to store sweet potatoes is to let them sit in a freezer, which helps to force the vegetable to later cook from the inside out. Now that you have the best sweet potatoes ready to use, the possibilities are endless.