Latin America & Caribbean

Pen Patat: Haitian Sweet Potato and Coconut Baked Pudding

Name: Pen Patat: Haitian Sweet Potato and Coconut Baked Pudding
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 1 h 20 min
Total time: 1 h 50 min
Yield: 8 servings
Cuisine: Haitian
Ingredients: 600 g (net, peeled weight) Sweet potato; 1 Ripe banana; 1 can (400 ml) Coconut milk; 200 ml Milk; 80 g Unrefined cane sugar; 50 g Butter; 1/4 tsp Salt; 1 tsp Ginger; 1 tsp Lime zest; 1 tsp Cinnamon (ground); 1/2 tsp Nutmeg (ground); 1/8 tsp Cloves (ground); 1 tsp Vanilla extract; 50 g Raisins

A recipe for pen patat (pain patate), a Haitian home treat made with grated sweet potato, ripe banana, coconut milk, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger. Covers the two-stage method of cooking the batter in a pot and then baking it, why red-skinned pale sweet potatoes suit it, and what to check when it won't set.

Published: October 24, 2026Total: 1 hr 50 minLevel: Beginner

Cooking flow

Cooking steps

STEP 11 / 6

Grate the sweet potato

15 min

Grating sweet potato on a fine grater — Grate finely until it becomes a moist paste

Peel the sweet potato thickly and, without soaking it in water, grate it right away on the fine side of a grater. It is enough when the grated potato is a moist paste with no coarse bits of fiber left. To avoid cutting your hand, when the remaining piece gets small, do not force it on the grater; chop it finely with a knife and add it.

STEP 22 / 6

Mix all the ingredients

5 min

Mixing sweet potato, banana, coconut milk, and spices in a bowl — The color of the spices is even, and it is as loose as a puréed soup

In a large bowl, mash the banana with a fork, then add the grated sweet potato, coconut milk, milk, cane sugar, butter, salt, ginger, lime zest, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and vanilla. Whisk for about 2 minutes, and you are ready when the color of the spices is spread evenly through the whole mixture. At this point a loose, soup-like batter is fine.

STEP 33 / 6

Cook the batter in the pot, stirring constantly

25 min

Cooking the sweet potato batter in a heavy pot, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon — Cook until the batter is thick and heavy and pulls away from the sides of the pot

Move the batter to a heavy pot and set it over medium heat. To keep the bottom from scorching, keep stirring constantly, scraping the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon. At about 15 minutes the batter becomes thick and heavy, and at 20–25 minutes the moisture has cooked off, the color has deepened a little, and the batter comes together in one mass and pulls away from the sides of the pot. The guide is a firmness at which a line drawn across the bottom with the spoon does not close right away.

STEP 44 / 6

Add the raisins and preheat the oven

5 min

Adding raisins to the cooked batter and mixing — Raisins are scattered through the batter and plump up

Preheat the oven to 180°C and brush the inside of the baking dish thinly with butter. Add the raisins to the pot, lower the heat to low, and cook 5 minutes more. It is enough when the raisins are scattered and blended through the batter and have plumped.

STEP 55 / 6

Pour into the dish and bake in the oven

45–60 min

Leveling the batter in the baking dish and baking it in the oven — The surface is browned and no batter clings to the skewer

While the batter is still hot, move it to the baking dish and level the surface with a rubber spatula. Bake in the 180°C oven for 45–60 minutes. It is done when the surface is browned and a bamboo skewer inserted in the center comes out without raw batter on it.

STEP 66 / 6

Cool and cut

1 hour

Cutting the cooled pen patat into 5 cm squares — Cut into 5 cm squares once the heat is gone and it feels springy when pressed

When it is baked, set the dish on a rack and cool for about an hour. While it is hot, the inside is soft and crumbles easily, so wait until the heat has gone and it feels springy when pressed with a finger. When it is firm enough that the cut edges do not collapse, cut it into squares of about 5 cm and it is done.

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Ingredients

1 / 2

Batter

Ingredient	Amount	Substitutes & notes
Sweet potato	600 g (net, peeled weight)	Fluffy, dry-textured types such as Beni Azuma set more easily
Ripe banana	1	One with black spots on the skin
Coconut milk	1 can (400 ml)	Shake the can well before using
Milk	200 ml	Evaporated milk also works
Unrefined cane sugar	80 g	A little brown sugar adds depth
Butter	50 g	Bring to room temperature. Keep a little more aside to grease the dish
Salt	1/4 tsp

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Aromatics and add-ins

Ingredient	Amount	Substitutes & notes
Ginger	1 tsp	Grated
Lime zest	1 tsp	Grated. Lemon zest also works
Cinnamon (ground)	1 tsp
Nutmeg (ground)	1/2 tsp
Cloves (ground)	1/8 tsp	Optional
Vanilla extract	1 tsp
Raisins	50 g	Optional; may be left out

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You stand at a heavy pot with a wooden spoon that never stops moving. In the pot is a thick, sticky batter of grated sweet potato combined with coconut milk and mashed banana. The sweet scent of cinnamon and nutmeg fills the kitchen, and when the batter starts pulling away from the sides of the pot, it is poured into a pan and goes into the oven. It comes out browned on top and dense and chewy inside. This is pen patat, the baked sweet potato pudding long loved in Haitian homes.

Most of the ingredients are easy to find at an ordinary supermarket. In fact, red-skinned, pale-fleshed sweet potatoes are very well suited to this sweet, because they are much like the pale, red-skinned tubers used in Haiti.

As Many Names as There Are Households

Making pen patat in a Haitian home kitchen, working the batter in a pot

According to the Haitian food blog Tchakayiti, this sweet is called pain patate in French and pen patat in Haitian Creole. It is also affectionately called "ti pen pa." Although "pain" (bread) is in the name, it is not bread but a dense pudding in which a sweet potato batter is cooked in a pot and then baked.

The writer of Tchakayiti asked many times how to make the aunt's pen patat she considered the best, but the aunt measured by eye and by the palm of her hand and could not write the recipe down. The answer was, "If you want to learn, come to the kitchen." In the end, the writer stood beside her aunt and measured each ingredient before the aunt picked it up. Like many Haitian home dishes, pen patat is a dish made by tasting as you go.

Did you know

The site of the Caribbean cooking show Taste the Islands introduces pen patat as a sweet made with "bonyato," the Caribbean sweet potato with purple skin and white flesh. The recipe by the American cook Emeril Lagasse also says that white sweet potato is traditional. Japanese-style sweet potatoes have red-purple skin and pale yellow flesh, so they are a much closer match to the local ingredient than the orange sweet potatoes of the United States.

The details of the recipe differ from house to house. The Taste the Islands recipe uses sweetened condensed milk and coconut milk, Tchakayiti uses evaporated milk and coconut milk, and Emeril's recipe uses grated fresh coconut, milk, and cream. What they share is grated sweet potato, mashed ripe banana, coconut, and the aroma of cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger.

Ingredients (one 20 × 25 cm baking dish, serves 8)

Ingredients for pen patat: sweet potato, ripe banana, coconut milk, cinnamon, nutmeg, raisins

This formulation is based on the Taste the Islands and Emeril recipes, adjusted to the amount that bakes in one 20 × 25 cm baking dish.

Tip

If you choose a fluffy, dry-textured variety of sweet potato rather than a sticky, moist one, it sets firmly after baking. If you make it with a moisture-rich variety such as Annou, reduce the milk to 150 ml.

How to Make Pen Patat

Allow about 30 minutes for prep, about 30 minutes to cook the batter in the pot, and about 50 minutes to bake in the oven. Allow about another hour for it to cool after baking.

Caution

The batter being cooked in the pot is very hot, and bubbles can burst and spatter. Use a long-handled wooden spoon, and do not hold the hand that stirs directly over the pot.

Tips for Preventing It from Not Setting or Scorching

A batter cooked until it pulls away from the sides of the pot compared with an undercooked batter

When pen patat won't set, in most cases the cause is not cooking the batter long enough in the pot. The Tchakayiti recipe also says to cook until the batter starts pulling away from the sides of the pot before turning off the heat. Even if you extend the baking time, a batter with a lot of moisture tends to stay loose in the center.

Tip

If the batter becomes so heavy while cooking in the pot that the wooden spoon will hardly move, add milk 1 tbsp at a time. Conversely, if the batter is still loose after 25 minutes of cooking, cook another 5 minutes before moving it to the dish.

Tip

If only the surface turns dark brown first while baking in the oven, loosely cover it with aluminum foil and keep baking. This keeps the surface from scorching before the inside is cooked.

Sweet with Condensed Milk, Fragrant with Desiccated Coconut

Pen patat baked sweet with sweetened condensed milk, served on a plate with vanilla ice cream

As in the Taste the Islands recipe, using sweetened condensed milk in place of the milk and sugar gives a moist, sweet result. In that case, reduce the cane sugar to 30 g to adjust the sweetness. Serving it warm from the oven with vanilla ice cream is also a way the same recipe recommends.

Emeril's recipe adds grated fresh coconut. A way to approximate that is to mix about 4 tbsp of desiccated coconut into the batter, which adds coconut aroma and a slightly crunchy texture.

How to Eat It

Pen patat cut into squares, with coffee — Cut into 5 cm squares, good warm or chilled

According to Taste the Islands, pen patat is a sweet that is good warm or cold and suits breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Cut it into squares and pick it up and eat it with your hands. As in Emeril's recipe, serving it warm with whipped cream makes a small dessert.

If you want to learn more about Caribbean sweet potato and coconut dishes, try the Haitian celebration soup soup joumou, or griot (in Japanese), pork marinated in citrus and fried. Together they give you both the sweet and the savory sides of the Haitian table.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sweet potatoes, ripe banana, and a can of coconut milk laid out

Can I make it with orange sweet potatoes?

Yes. Emeril's recipe also says that orange sweet potato can substitute if you cannot get white. However, the color will be deeper and the sweetness and water content higher, so reduce the milk a little.

How should I store it?

Tchakayiti says this sweet spoils easily and recommends refrigerating it if it will not be eaten within 1–2 days. Once the heat is gone, wrap it in plastic wrap, refrigerate it, and finish it soon.

Can I leave out the banana?

It will bake without it, but the sweet aroma of the banana and its sticky texture are part of what makes pen patat what it is. If you really do not use it, add 10 g more cane sugar.

Which ingredients should I watch for allergies?

It uses milk and butter (dairy). You can make it dairy-free by replacing the milk with coconut milk or oat milk and the butter with coconut oil. It contains no egg or wheat.

Sources

Tchakayiti, “Haitian pain patate (sweet potato pudding) recipe,” published 22 November 2018. Accessed and checked 22 October 2026. https://tchakayiti.com/home/pain-patate-sweet-potato-pudding-recipe/
Taste the Islands, “Pen Patat (Haitian Sweet Potato Pudding),” published 2 January 2017. Accessed and checked 22 October 2026. https://tastetheislandstv.com/pen-patat-haitian-sweet-potato-pudding/
Emeril Lagasse, “Haitian Sweet Potato Pudding Cake,” Emerils.com. Accessed and checked 22 October 2026. https://www.emerils.com/124557/haitian-sweet-potato-pudding-cake