Cranberry Pecan Sweet Potato Casserole

Cranberry Pecan Sweet Potato Casserole – a must for your Thanksgiving dinner! Diced sweet potatoes tossed in brown sugar, orange juice, vanilla, pumpkin pie spice, and dried cranberries. Top the casserole with a crunchy topping of flour, brown sugar, pumpkin pie spice, butter, and chopped pecans. Can make in advance and refrigerate or freeze for later.

scooping sweet potato casserole from baking dish

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Easy Cranberry Pecan Sweet Potato Casserole

Sweet potato casserole is a staple at our holiday meals. It just doesn’t feel like Thanksgiving if we don’t have this Cranberry Pecan Sweet Potato Casserole on the table. Diced sweet potatoes tossed in brown sugar, orange juice, vanilla, pumpkin pie spice, and dried cranberries. The casserole isn’t topped with the traditional marshmallow topping. This casserole has a yummy pecan streusel topping. It is really, really delicious!

sweet potato casserole in baking dish

How to Make Sweet Potato Casserole with Crunchy Topping

This casserole is very easy to make. Start with peeling and chopping up 3 pounds of sweet potatoes. Next, toss the sweet potatoes with brown sugar, orange juice, vanilla, salt, pumpkin pie spice, and dried cranberries. Place the potato mixture into a baking pan and cover with foil. Pop it in the oven. While the potatoes are baking, make the crunchy pecan streusel topping. Combine flour, brown sugar, pumpkin pie spice, butter, and chopped pecans. Take the sweet potato casserole out of the oven, add the streusel topping, and put back into the oven. Super easy!

  • If you don’t like sweet potatoes, you can substitute butternut squash. Walmart sells bags of frozen peeled and cubed butternut squash. It would work great in this recipe.
  • Can Sweet Potato Casserole be made in advance? Yes! You can make this the night before and refrigerate it until you are ready to bake. Go ahead and make the streusel topping the day before as well and store it in the refrigerator. If baking straight from the refrigerator, you may need to add a few minutes to the cooking time.
  • Can Sweet Potato Casserole be frozen? Yes! You can freeze this casserole unbaked or baked for a quick side dish later.
  • If freezing this unbaked, freeze it without the crunchy topping. Make the topping when you are ready to bake the casserole. To bake after freezing, thaw completely and bake as directed below.
  • To reheat this casserole after freezing, thaw completely and reheat in the microwave or covered in the oven at 350ºF for 35 to 45 minutes.
scooping sweet potato casserole from baking dish

The BEST Sweet Potato Casserole for Thanksgiving

As I said, this casserole is a MUST for our holiday meal. We absolutely LOVE all the flavors in this casserole – orange juice, cranberries, pecans, and pumpkin pie spice. YUM! It is comfort food at its best! Here are a few of our favorite recipes from the blog that go great with this casserole:

No Knead Dinner Rolls

No Knead Dinner Rolls recipe – seriously THE BEST rolls EVER!! The best part is that you can make them…

Cola Glazed Baked Ham

Cola Glazed Baked Ham – you’ll never buy a fancy store-bought honey-glazed baked ham again! Only 3 ingredients in the…

scooping sweet potato casserole from baking dish

Cranberry Pecan Sweet Potato Casserole

Yield: 10 people
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour
Total Time 1 hour 10 minutes
Cranberry Pecan Sweet Potato Casserole – a must for your Thanksgiving dinner! Diced sweet potatoes tossed in brown sugar, orange juice, vanilla, pumpkin pie spice, and dried cranberries. Top the casserole with a crunchy topping of flour, brown sugar, pumpkin pie spice, butter, and chopped pecans. Can make in advance and refrigerate or freeze for later. #casserole #thanksgiving #sweetpotato #christmas

Ingredients:

Sweet Potato Mixture

  • ½ cup packed brown sugar
  • 2 Tbsp orange juice
  • 2 tsp vanilla
  • ½ tsp salt or to taste
  • 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
  • 2 Tbsp butter melted
  • 3 pounds sweet potatoes peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
  • 1 cup dried cranberries

Topping

Instructions:

  • Preheat oven to 400ºF. Lightly spray a 9×13-inch dish with cooking spray.
  • In a large bowl, combine brown sugar, orange juice, vanilla, salt, 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice, and 2 Tbsp melted butter. Add sweet potatoes and cranberries; toss to coat. Pour into prepared dish.
  • Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove from oven.
  • In a small bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar, and 1½ teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice. Cut in ¼ cup cold butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in pecans. Sprinkle over sweet potato mixture.
  • Bake, uncovered, for 25-30 minutes or until bubbly and sweet potatoes are tender.

Notes:

  • If you don’t like sweet potatoes, you can substitute butternut squash. Walmart sells bags of frozen peeled and cubed butternut squash. It would work great in this recipe.
  • Can Sweet Potato Casserole be made in advance? Yes! You can make this the night before and refrigerate it until you are ready to bake. Go ahead and make the streusel topping the day before as well and store it in the refrigerator. If baking straight from the refrigerator, you may need to add a few minutes to the cooking time.
  • Can Sweet Potato Casserole be frozen? Yes! You can freeze this casserole unbaked or baked for a quick side dish later.
  • If freezing this unbaked, freeze it without the crunchy topping. Make the topping when you are ready to bake the casserole. To bake after freezing, thaw completely and bake as directed below.
  • To reheat this casserole after freezing, thaw completely and reheat in the microwave or covered in the oven at 350ºF for 35 to 45 minutes.

Steph

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scooping sweet potato casserole from baking dish

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Comments

  1. or….If I baked it the day before without the crunchy topping then wanted to reheat it and add and cook the crunchy topping, would reheating without the foil work so I could cook the crunchy topping? Thank you!

      1. How long would you recommend I cook the previous day without the topping?
        Thank you so much! Everyone who has seen the recipe is dying to try it!

  2. If baked the day prior, do you think this would also be good at room temperature? There might not be an option to reheat it at the potluck. Thanks! It sounds fantastic!

  3. Great recipe! Made it with sliced almonds instead of pecans because my boyfriend doesn’t like pecans. It turned out very good. Watch the baking time if using almonds since they can burn faster.

  4. You have pumpkin pie spice listed twice in the ingredients and twice in the instructions, but you don’t say which amount (1tsp/1.5tsp) to use in which step(2/4) of the instructions.

  5. Could fresh cranberries be used in this? I made a very similar casserole last year, was delicious, can’t find the recipe, but it called for fresh cranberries.

    1. I haven’t made this with fresh cranberries, but I think as long as you cook it long enough it would be just fine

  6. This was a big hit this Thanksgiving. I did add one more thing. 2 apples. One Gala , one Granny Smith, cored and cubed and added just before I put the Struesel was put on top.

    My family really don’t care for Sweet potatoes, but they were asking for some to take home.

  7. This was a HUGE hit on Thanksgiving! My family says I will be in charge of sweet potatoes every year from now on because of this recipe!

    1. I had intended to make my usual sweet potato casserole for Thanksgiving, but after seeing this, I think I want to give it a try. I have canned, precooked sweet potatoes. Do you think those would be okay if I plumped the cranberries ahead of time, then skipped the first bake? Or perhaps reduce it to 15 minutes?

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