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If you've been on the internet at any point this week you've likely heard about the #PattiPie.
Some background: Singer Patti LaBelle—don't pretend you haven't sung "Lady Marmalade" or "If You Only Knew" at karaoke recently—published a cookbook in 1999 called LaBelle Cuisine: Recipes to Sing About that contained a recipe for sweet potato pie. LaBelle struck a deal with Walmart to start selling the pie in September and sales were just okay. But a week ago, a man named James Wright uploaded a video to Facebook praising the pie, claiming it's so good that it has the power to "turn you into Patti LaBelle, honey." As of this posting it's been viewed nearly 10M times.
Now Walmart can't even keep the mighty #PattiPie in stock. Things have gotten so bad that people are turning to eBay, where the pies are currently selling for up to $50.
That's the bad news. The good news: We reached out and got the recipe from LaBelle's out-of-print book so you can make it at home.
But first, we had to test the thing. And that's when we took the #PattiPie from good to great.
Assistant Food Editor Kat Sacks led the charge. After making the pie several times in our test kitchen, we decided to tweak some of the ingredients. "We kept ending up with leftover filling," says Sacks. "So we use less sweet potatoes in our version, as well as two-thirds less nutmeg."
Then there's the crust. We swapped in our perfect pie crust, which has a little less flour and bit less water than the version called out in the recipe. The crust is still shortening-based, so it's super flaky, but we found in our testing that it shrinks less and is more forgiving than Patti's crust.
The rest of the pie? It's all Patti. And just like Patti, this pie is a showstopper.
