Forget pumpkin. Sweet potato is the best for fall baking.

On a recent episode of our podcast, Things Bakers Know, I mentioned how I lived off local sweet potatoes when I went to school in North Carolina. (I had a crate of them stashed in my closet, true story.) What I didn’t mention are all the things I baked with them. I ran a baked goods business with friends on campus, and our specialty was sweet potato chocolate chip cookies. Since then, I’ve been a firm believer that they deserve just as much a place in fall baking as pumpkin. And they even — hot take alert! — might be superior.

For one, they have more flavor. When it comes to fall recipes, the big elephant in the room is that pumpkin doesn’t really taste like anything. When we crave pumpkin-y recipes, we’re mostly just craving pumpkin spice. But what if you took that seasonal spice blend and paired it with earthy, slightly caramelly sweet potato instead, for a flavor pairing more than the sum of its parts? That’s my kind of fall baking.   

So what's the best way to start baking with sweet potatoes this season? First up is my favorite recipe on our list of the 49 Best Fall Recipes, Ranked: Sweet Potato Sheet Cake with Marshmallow Frosting. This ultra-soft cake is gently spiced and glows orange from the sweet potato purée, and it’s finished with a fluffy meringue that mimics marshmallow-topped sweet potato casseroles.

Photography by Patrick Marinello; food styling by Yekaterina Boytsova

Sweet potatoes show up a few more times on that fall recipes list. You can mash them up and have them for dinner if you make these easy, pillowy gnocchi, or for breakfast, with these gorgeous, tender cinnamon rolls (which will make a great special breakfast for upcoming holidays). There’s also this Pecan-Crusted Sweet Potato Pound Cake — the sweet potatoes shine, but the real star is the crunchy pecan crust on the outside of the cake. 

But wait, there’s more! I love this cardamom-spiked Sweet Potato Bread, a quick bread jazzed up with a topping of buttery streusel (and easily made gluten-free with Measure for Measure Flour), as well as these soft, flaky Sweet Potato Biscuits, which take me straight back to my years in North Carolina. And then there’s this Purple Sweet Potato Pie. Its stunning indigo hue will stand out on any holiday dessert table, and proves sweet potato belongs right beside pumpkin.

Photography by Rick Holbrook; food styling by Kaitlin Wayne

Here’s another secret: Most pumpkin recipes work perfectly fine if you sub in sweet potato purée instead. Those chocolate chip cookies I made in college? They started out as pumpkin cookies, and we just swapped sweet potato purée for the pumpkin. You can often find canned sweet potato purée right next to the pumpkin on grocery store shelves, but of course you can always make your own from fresh sweet potatoes. (Follow Steps 1 & 2 in this recipe for our go-to method.) 

Start swapping sweet potatoes in for pumpkin this season, and you’ll see why they’re the superior fall baking ingredient. Before you know it, you might just have a crate stashed in your closet like me.

Cover photo (Sweet Potato Sheet Cake with Marshmallow Frosting) by Patrick Marinello; food styling by Yekaterina Boytsova.