Jamaican Sweet Potato Pone
This cozy Caribbean cake is intoxicatingly fragrant with cinnamon, ginger, and coconut.
- Serves
12–16
- Time
2 hours 55 minutes
Making Jamaican sweet potato pudding, or “pone,” the traditional way is rather involved: It requires hand-grating mountains of tubers—white Asian sweet potatoes and yellow African yams—and making coconut milk from scratch. Then comes the baking, in a Dutch oven buried in the glowing embers of a coal stove, with ash atop the lid for insulation. Due to the cooking method, the dessert is fondly called “hell a top, hell a bottom, and hallelujah in the middle.”
But these days, most Jamaicans—myself included—don’t have time to make pone the old-fashioned way. Cue: my family’s recipe, which mirrors how many Jamaicans make the pudding at home today. We omit the yellow yams, use store-bought coconut milk, and bake it all up in a standard baking tin—and none of the flavor is sacrificed. We also soak the cake in a moreish coconutty custard, which makes every bite a carnival.
The type of sweet potato is crucial here. Seek out the white-fleshed Asian (sometimes called Japanese) variety we use in Jamaica, not the standard orange ones. The latter’s high water content results in a sludgy (versus sliceable) pone.
Ingredients
For the pone:
- 4 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted, plus more for greasing
- 1 cup (4.6 oz.) all-purpose flour
- 2 cups (three 5.4-oz. cans) unsweetened coconut cream
- ½ cup unsweetened shredded coconut (see footnote)
- 3 Tbsp. finely grated ginger
- 3 Tbsp. vanilla extract
- 2 tsp. ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp. ground allspice
- 1 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
- ½ tsp. fine salt
- 1¼ cups (10 oz.) packed dark brown sugar
- ½ cup raisins
- 1 cup (5 oz.) fine cornmeal
- 1½ lb. Japanese white sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-in. chunks
- ¼ cup blackstrap molasses
For the custard:
- ½ cup coconut milk
- 2 Tbsp. packed dark brown sugar
- 1 Tbsp. (½ oz.) unsalted butter, melted
- ½ tsp. ground allspice
- ½ tsp. ground cinnamon
- ½ tsp. ground ginger
- ½ tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
- ½ tsp. vanilla extract
- ⅛ tsp. fine salt
Instructions
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Step 5
Step 6
Note: Use regular shredded coconut, not desiccated/ground or coconut chips.
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