Joyebells Sweet Potato Pies Recipe
Joyebells is a pie company in Richmond, Virginia, built on an old family recipe. A Southern sweet potato pie in its style, for one 9-inch crust.
- Total
- 4 hr 15 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories (est.)
- 405
Joyebells sweet potato pies come from a pie company in Richmond, Virginia, founded by Joye B. Moore in 2019 on the recipes of her great-great-great-grandmother. Those recipes are not public. This page tells what is known about the brand and gives a Southern sweet potato pie for one 9-inch crust: roasted sweet potatoes, butter, sugar, evaporated milk, eggs, cinnamon and nutmeg.
Who makes Joyebells pies
Richmond BizSense reported in February 2025 that Moore started Joyebells in 2019, selling sweet potato pies made from the recipes of her third-great-grandmother, Susan Mae Howell. Within a few years the pies were in thousands of stores of chains including Kroger, Food Lion and Sam's Club, and peach and pumpkin pies had joined them.
The same report describes a setback and a restart. In 2023 more than 315,000 peach pies were pulled from shelves after a manufacturing problem, the company lost its partnership with Sam's Club and sold only through QVC in 2024. For 2025 Moore planned a relaunch with a new manufacturer, new packaging and online sales, and appeared on Shark Tank on 7 February 2025.
The pie below is not the Joyebells recipe. It is a sweet potato pie of the same Southern kind, and a slice, an eighth of it, comes to about 405 calories by USDA figures. MakeFoodLovely is not connected with Joyebells.
Recipe
Southern Sweet Potato Pie
A Southern sweet potato pie in the style of Joyebells — roasted sweet potatoes with butter, sugar, evaporated milk, eggs, cinnamon and nutmeg, baked in a 9-inch crust. Eight slices.
- Prep
- 20 min
- Cook
- 1 hr 55 min
- Total
- 4 hr 15 min
- Serves
- 8
- Cuisine
- Southern
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 pounds sweet potatoes
- 1/2 cup softened unsalted butter
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
- 1/2 cup evaporated milk
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 refrigerated pie crust
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 400°F. Prick the sweet potatoes with a fork, set them on a lined baking sheet and roast for 50 to 60 minutes, until completely soft. Let them cool until they can be handled, then peel them.
- Lower the oven to 350°F. Fit the pie crust into a 9-inch pie plate and crimp the edge.
- Beat the warm sweet potato flesh with the butter until smooth. Beat in both sugars, then the evaporated milk, the eggs, the vanilla, the cinnamon, the nutmeg and the salt, until the filling is smooth and even.
- Pour the filling into the crust. Bake for 55 to 60 minutes, until the edge is set and the middle moves only slightly when the plate is shaken.
- Cool the pie on a rack for at least 2 hours before cutting.
Nutrition
- Calories:
- 405
Calculated from the ingredient quantities above using the USDA FoodData Central database, then divided by the number of servings. It is an estimate and will vary with the exact products you use.
Roasted, not boiled
Roasting drives water out of the sweet potatoes and browns their sugar. Boiled sweet potatoes take water in, and the filling made from them is paler and looser. A pound and a half gives about two cups of flesh.
Beat the flesh while it is still warm, with the butter first. Warm sweet potato takes the butter in, and any strings wind themselves around the beaters, where they can be pulled off.
A sweet potato pie that sets without cracking
- Out of the oven with a wobble. The middle should move like set custard. It firms up as it cools. A pie baked until the middle is stiff cracks across the top.
- Two hours of cooling. Cut warm, the filling runs.
- Evaporated milk has less water than fresh milk, so the filling sets with two eggs.
Sweet potato pie and pumpkin pie
The two look alike and are seasoned alike. Sweet potato is denser and sweeter on its own, which is why this filling needs no more than a cup of sugar in all, and it is beaten, not just stirred, to get it smooth.
For a crust from scratch, any single-crust pie dough for a 9-inch plate works; it does not need to be baked first. A second crust takes the homemade apple pie filling.
Made ahead
The pie keeps four days in the refrigerator, covered, and is served cold or at room temperature. It freezes for a month, wrapped well, and thaws overnight in the refrigerator.
On a holiday table it stands beside apple desserts such as the apple crisp without oats. A pan dessert that needs no crust at all is the cheesecake dump cake.
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