I love pie pastry because I love the buttery and sweet-savoury balance, but many of these shelf-stable varieties tend to have margarine or shortening. As such, I was absolutely delighted to find a season limited Sweet Potato Pie Pastry by Fujiya Home Pie that only uses butter!
Officially, the name is Jukusei Mitsu-Imo Mini (Pie) by Fujiya Home Pie. Jukusei means fully ripened or aged, and mitsu-imo literally means honey sweet potato and refers to yellow sweet potatoes that are so dense and sweet that their flesh becomes transluscent when cooked, ending up both tasting and looking like honey. These include the annou-imo and beni-haruka imo varieties.
And indeed it did not disappoint.
There was a very prominent yellow sweet potato fragrance from the moment I opened the bag, even without shaking it.
The actual flavour was also very pleasant and prominently characteristic of yellow sweet potato. It had a very nice and fragrant honey and creamy flavour that went very well with the butter and salt in the pastry.
The wheat and butter combination in the pastry was also very comforting and very well balanced.
The texture was very crispy but not hard at all, so it was more crumbly than the usual rusk, despite not having a hint of sogginess or moisture. It was as perfect a texture as one can get in a pie pastry.
Finally, there was a pop of slightly caramelised toasted notes at the edges of the pie pastry, which could be due to the caramelised or sugar-icing-like substance glistening on the surface, seen slightly more clearly in this darker photo below. (Click photo to enlarge.) It is probably the standard sugar coating on leaf pie pastries, albeit possibly slightly more caramelised and crunchy than usual. I thought that this was a stroke of genious when paired with honey sweet potato as it mimics the roasted caramelised bits in roasted sweet potatoes.
I also loved the bite-sized pieces, which made it easy to share cleanly. As pie pastry can get very messy and crumbly if you try to bite into a piece, this bite-sized format is crucial for eating it neatly when you're not at home.
Finally, here is the ingredients list. It is pretty pure: wheat flour, vegetable oil, sugar, sweet potato paste, satsuma-imo powder, full cream milk, starter (leavened) dough, salt, skimmed milk, whey powder, dairy products, mizuame, emulsifier, carotinoid colouring. I thought mizuame was another interesting ingredient as it is normally not used in Western baking, but it went very well with this because it has malty notes that deepen the complexity of the caramelised and honey notes from the sugar and sweet potato.
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