Sweet potato pie and pumpkin pie are both associated with fall and feature a beautiful orange-colored filling, but these two sweets are different enough to warrant a debate about which is better. If you think sweet potato pie is superior to its more famous cousin, you should know to treat it differently from pumpkin pie when making it yourself.

One thing to avoid when making sweet potato pie is seasoning it like it's a pumpkin pie. This means leaving out "pumpkin spice," the spice blend made famous by Starbucks' pumpkin spice latte; it can include cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, ground allspice, ground cloves, and cardamom, and is meant to add flavor to relatively bland pumpkin.

Not only does pumpkin spice make your sweet potato pie taste like pumpkin pie, which defeats the point of using sweet potatoes; it makes your end result taste like a lackluster pumpkin pie. Allspice and cloves don't pair well with sweet potato, and vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, and/or ginger is all you need to enhance the tubers' natural sweetness.