Serve our incredible dairy free and Gluten Free Sweet Potato Casserole with your holiday meals! It’s hot and creamy on the inside with a crisp topping. We’ve made part of this recipe in the Instant Pot to make it easier and faster. Plus our recipe is also soy free, nut free, and vegan.
I’m back with another great allergy friendly holiday recipe for you today: dairy free and gluten free Sweet Potato Casserole! It’s hot and creamy inside with a delicious crunchy layer of streusel on top.
You won’t miss the dairy, eggs, or nuts in this recipe!
Oddly enough, this is my first time making sweet potato casserole. our Thanksgiving and Christmas meals at our house have been largely non-traditional.
Our holiday meals have included things like alligator sausage, smoked game hens, turducken, bacon wrapped asparagus, and other fun fare, but not until this year have we made traditional stuffing or sweet potatoes casserole. So this is a first for our family!
Since we have multiple allergies in our house, we made this one completely allergy friendly and top 8 free. My daughter has tree nut allergies, so we made this recipe without the traditional pecans on top. But you can add them to this recipe if you can have pecans in your house.
How to make sweet potato casserole
I made this recipe a bit faster and easier by cooking the sweet potatoes in the Instant Pot. It shaves off at a bit of cooking time from this recipe!
Here are the steps for making this recipe:
- Cook your sweet potatoes in the Instant Pot/pressure cooker
- While the sweet potatoes are cooking, mix together your streusel topping
- Mash the sweet potatoes with the dairy free butter and other filling ingredients
- Top with half the streusel and bake
- Put the other half of the streusel on and bake some more
- Cool a bit and serve warm with dinner. Delicious!
We used an 8×8 pan for this recipe and I filled the 8×8 inch pan pretty full with sweet potatoes. But you can cook this recipe in a 9×13 pan as well if you want instead. Both pans will work for this recipe.
We used a nice thick layer or streusel on top of our casserole, so if you make this in a 9×13 pan you can leave the amount of streusel the same or double it. That’s up to you!
If you want more crumb to sweet potato ratio, you can spread this out in a 9×13 pan and double the crumb/streusel mixture to put on top.
The streusel is my favorite part, so I vote for doubling it, but that’s just my preference 😉
If you bake this in a 9×13 pan and double the streusel, the baking times will be the same as baking it in an 8×8 inch pan.
We call for adding the streusel in 2 parts in this recipe since the sweet potatoes release some water during baking and can soften up the first layer of streusel a bit, so we added the other half of the streusel towards the end of baking to ensure it has a nice crisp topping when it comes out.
Variations for our sweet potato casserole
As I mentioned earlier, my daughter has tree nut allergies, so we made this recipe without pecans on top. But if you can have pecans, you can sprinkle chopped pecans on top of this vegan sweet potato casserole to make it even more delicious!
Some people also love sweet potato casserole topped with marshmallows instead of streusel topping. If you love eating it that way, you can skip the streusel and add marshmallows to the top of this instead.
If you’re a fan of chocolate, you can also sprinkle some mini allergy friendly chocolate chips on top of the sweet potatoes under the streusel to add a little chocolate layer to this recipe, too.
I was going to do this with my recipe, but my husband isn’t a fan of chocolate so I left that out. But it would be delicious with chocolate chips added!
How to make this recipe ahead to save time
If you’d like to save a little time on Thanksgiving or Christmas day, you can make the sweet potatoes 1-2 days ahead of time and then bake it the day of your dinner.
Just cook your sweet potatoes in the Instant Pot 1-2 days before your holiday dinner, skin them, mash them, add your margarine and seasonings, spread it out in your dish and then put it in the fridge for 1-2 days.
When you’re ready to bake your sweet potatoes, take them out of the fridge about 30 minutes to 1 hour before you plan to bake them to warm the pan up a bit. Add your streusel topping, then bake it according to the recipe directions.
Check out our other great Thanksgiving recipes!
- Instant Pot Cranberry Sauce (Naturally Sweetened)
- Garlic Roasted Rainbow Carrots
- Gluten Free Dairy Free Stuffing
- Gluten Free Dairy Free Sweet Potato Casserole
- Gluten Free and Dairy Free Holiday Pies
- Gluten Free Dairy Free Thanksgiving recipe roundup
- Crustless Pumpkin Pie (Gluten Free and Dairy Free)
- No Bake Pumpkin Pie (Gluten Free and Dairy Free)
- Ginger Apple Sparkling Cider
Gluten Free Sweet Potato Casserole (Dairy Free)
Ingredients
Sweet potato mixture:
- 3 large sweet potatoes, unpeeled (5-6 inches long, makes about 5-6 cups of mashed sweet potatoes)
- ¾ cup packed brown sugar
- ⅓ cup dairy free soy free butter*
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Streusel/crumb topping:
- ¾ cup packed brown sugar
- ½ cup sorghum flour OR brown rice flour
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- Dash salt
- ¼ cup dairy free soy free butter*, softened
Equipment
Instructions
Sweet potatoes:
- Wash your large sweet potatoes and cut them in half as shown in the photo in the post. Leave the peels on. Pierce each sweet potato half about 3 times and place in the Instant Pot or CrockPot Express with a steamer rack in the bottom.
- Add 1 cup of water to the pressure cooker. The steamer rack will keep the potatoes from sitting in the water.
- Close the lid on the pressure cooker, close the steam valve, and cook on Manual (for CrockPot Express) or Steam (for Instant Pot) on high for 15 minutes.
- Once it's done cooking, turn off the keep warm feature and allow natural pressure release for 10 minutes, then quick release the rest of the pressure.
- While the sweet potatoes are cooking in the Instant Pot, prepare the streusel.
Streusel topping:
- In a medium bowl, stir together with a fork the brown sugar, sorghum or brown rice flour, cinnamon, and salt.
- Cut the softened dairy free butter into the brown sugar mixture until it's mixed well and crumbly. Set aside.
Putting it all together:
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray the bottom of an 8×8 inch pan or a 9×13 pan (both will work fine in this recipe).
- Remove the sweet potatoes from the Instant Pot while they're still hot and remove and discard the peel/skin. Use hot pads or these will burn your hands.
- Add the brown sugar, dairy free butter, vanilla, cinnamon, and salt and mash together until mixed well. Spread into the bottom of the prepared pan.
- Spread half the streusel topping on the sweet potatoes and set aside the other half.
- Bake the sweet potato casserole uncovered for 30 minutes.
- Spread on the other half of the streusel topping and bake again for 10 more minutes.
- Allow to cool for about 15 minutes before serving warm with your meal. Enjoy!
Notes
Nutrition
Sarah Jane Parker is the founder, recipe creator, and photographer behind The Fit Cookie. She’s a food allergy mom and allergy friendly food blogger of 12 years based in Wyoming. Sarah is also an ACSM Certified Personal Trainer, ACE Certified Health Coach, Revolution Running certified running coach, and an ACE Certified Fitness Nutrition Specialist
Perfect! Most loved side dish this Thanksgiving! Made it for both Thanksgiving dinners I prepared and everyone kept commenting on how good it was. Thank you for sharing
Thank you Kim!
Would it be possible to use coconut sugar instead of brown sugar? any thoughts?
Hi Haley! I definitely think you’d be able to use coconut sugar in this recipe in place of brown sugar 🙂