One year, my grandma came over to teach me how to make Thanksgiving dinner. We made a brine for smoked turkey wings, greens, cornbread dressing, sweet potato pie and cheesecake. As we talked and cooked, I noticed that we had sweet potato and cheesecake batter left over. Ding! My mind went straight to sweet potato cheesecake. So we mixed the batters into a graham cracker crust and crossed our fingers. It was delicious! I proudly took it over to my aunt’s the following year and it was a success! To this day it sits among the amazing peach cobblers, lemon cakes, pound cakes, apple pies, cheesecake brownies and sweet potato pies my aunts bake to this day.

After moving to Atlanta, Thanksgiving dinner became an afterthought. It was much easier to fly into St. Louis to enjoy my family’s cooking then to prepare a dinner that no one would be home to eat. So I got out of the habit of cooking the dishes that we look forward to every holiday and set my focus on making other things.

Moving back to St. Louis and starting a food based business constantly pushes me to be creative. So in the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I figured there’s no better way to celebrate it other than by making one of my favorite desserts, Sweet Potato Cheesecake. It’s really the only dessert I know how to make so I want to share it. :) It’s available in the Romantic Dinner Kit available now. Order it today and who knows, it might just become one of your favorites too!