Sweet potato pudding is a long-standing Bermudian dessert with roots in British colonial pudding traditions, adapted with Caribbean sweet potatoes that arrived via the Atlantic slave trade. Often appears at Sunday lunches and family gatherings. Less famous than cassava pie but more commonly made.
Cut a thick slice of warm Bermuda sweet potato pudding — pale-orange dense crumb, faintly golden top, brushed with glossy amber rum sauce that pools in the cracks. Bite: dense, almost-cake-like, the sweet potato providing natural caramel sweetness, the brown sugar deepening it, the spices warming, the rum lingering at the back of the throat. The brown-butter sauce adds toasted-nut richness. On a Sunday afternoon with a cup of strong Bermuda coffee, this is heritage British-Caribbean dessert at its most-honest.
Hand-mashing (vs pureeing) keeps a pleasant slight chunkiness in the pudding. The flour is essential as a binder; without it the eggs alone don't quite hold the texture. The rum is best added off the heat for the sauce to preserve its aroma; cooking it boils off the alcohol's volatile aromatics.
Variations
Sweet potato pudding with raisins. With chopped pecans (modern). With orange zest. With ginger. Without rum (kid-friendly). With molasses replacing brown sugar (deeper). Layered version with cassava (cross-island).
On the Palate
Where Bermuda Sweet Potato Pudding sits in the Bermudan flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 8
How it's made
10 steps · 25 min active + 50 min waiting
- 132 min
Boil 1.2 kg sweet potatoes (whole, in skin) in salted water 30 min until fork-tender.
- 28 min
Cool slightly; peel. Mash in a large bowl with a potato masher (not a food processor — keep texture).
Watch outMash by hand and leave a little texture — run it through a processor and it goes gluey-smooth, losing the pleasant slight chunk the pudding wants.
- 32 min
Preheat oven to 175°C. Butter a 25-cm round baking dish.
- 44 min
Beat into the mashed sweet potato: 150 g brown sugar, 100 g butter (melted), 3 large eggs, 200 ml whole milk, 2 tbsp Gosling's dark rum, 1 tbsp ground cinnamon, 1 tsp ground nutmeg, 1/4 tsp ground clove, 1 tsp vanilla, 1/2 tsp salt.
- 51 min
Whisk in 50 g all-purpose flour to bind.
- 61 min
Pour into the prepared dish.
- 747 min
Bake 45-50 min until the top is golden-brown and a knife inserted comes out clean.
Watch outIt's done when the top is golden-brown and a knife slid into the center comes out clean — pull it while the knife's still wet and the middle stays raw and sinks.
- 816 min
Rest 15 min before serving.
- 94 min
Optional sauce: in a small pan, melt 60 g butter until browned. Add 80 g brown sugar, 60 ml dark rum, 2 tbsp lime juice. Whisk to a smooth glossy sauce.
Watch outFor the sauce, stir the rum in off the heat — its aroma is delicate and simmering it just boils off the perfume you want.
- 101 min
Serve warm in slices, drizzled with the rum sauce.
