Praline Sweet Potato Casserole

I've been pretty bad at updating this lately. Especially since it's the season of good food - Thanksgiving and Christmas! It's been suggested that I do a vegan Christmas cookie inventory which sounds like an awesome idea. Hopefully life will calm down a bit and I can get my cookie maker in gear.

First - Thanksgiving! For Thanksgiving at my parent's house I was in charge of the sweet potatoes. I wanted to really wow em. I did some searching on vegweb and here's what I decided to do:

Ingredients (use vegan versions):
FILLING
4 cups cooked, mashed sweet potatoes (or yams)
3 tablespoon melted soy butter
1/3 cup orange juice
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoon brandy
1/2 ts ground ginger (1 tablespoon fresh grated)
1 ts salt
1/8 ts pepper
1/4 ts allspice
1 ts grated orange peel
1/2 ts cinnamon

TOPPING:
1/3 cup brown vegan sugar
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/2 ts cinnamon

Directions:
Combine all filling ingredients. Mix well with an electric beater. Pour into a well-buttered 2 qt. shallow casserole.

Combine topping ingredients and mix until well blended. Spread with praline topping. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes

This is a really sweet casserole. It's almost dessert like. And it was pretty easy to make. I doubled the recipe and used about 7 or 8 sweet potatoes. I think it took me about 10 minutes to do once the sweet potatoes were soft and boiled.

For all the raving people did on vegweb about this recipe, I was expecting something amazing. I'd say it was ok - maybe a three out of five. I felt like the orangey-ness was duking it out with the sweet potatoes. But I didn't really measure the orange zest so it might have been my fault. The topping was definitely tastey though - that was gone first. We also had plenty of leftovers after ten people with two helpings.