Chocolate Potato Cake

[slemslempike]

Chocolate cake, yes. (I have just made one and had a breakfast of bowl scrapings.) Chocolate and orange cake, ooh! But chocolate and orange POTATO cake, I do not think.

(I mean, I would totally try some if the opportunity arose. But potato cakes are those savoury fried things in breakfasts sometimes - they are NOT for chocolate.)

Comments

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Oh, is it that 'Smuggle vegetables into cakes' woman? I think she also does chocolate and beetroot.

I really want some potato cakes now.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I don't know, the page just has hands. I have in fact made chocolate beetroot cakes, which were very nice indeed, but I think that is different from potato. Somehow.

[jinxremoving.livejournal.com]

It kind of bothers me that that page does not offer an explanation of what the hell they are playing at.

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

Hmm - flour is made of starch, and potato is made of starch, so I can sort of get behind that. (But once I start thinking this sort of thing I'll start trying to make cake out of pasta.)

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Exactly! They can't go aruond pretending that it's a normal thing to do. At the very least they should have some sort of apology for possibly taking you outside your culinary comfort zone.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I can't decide whether to demand that you never do that, or to demand that you do so asap and post pictures.

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

Beetroot is sweet of itself (sugar beet is, I understand, a very close relative of the purple stuff). I should imagine they are nice.

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

It would look quite nice if you did it with those bow ties...hmm.

Edit! OMG!

[ruudboy.livejournal.com]

Well, pasta's just flour really.

I think the c&o potato cake sounds strangely appealing.

[birdsflying]

Potato is often used as a flour substitute - I often use mashed potato or potato flour when I'm baking for friends who need to be gluten-free. Or if I'm making my mom's potato rolls, which are lucky if they get to cool before my family has devoured the lot. nom nom nom.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course! I grew up with the smell of a sugar beet factory, so I should have known there was a better reason that "because I said so" that beetroot was okay and potato wasn't.

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

Flour used in cakes has different characteristics from flour used for pasta. And using actual pasta would produce a very un-cakelike texture.

As for using potatoes... that summons up hideous memories of rationing-era cookery - I'm just old enough to have faint memories of bread rationing, which came in after WWII but didn't last as long as other rationing. Carrots were used a lot, but for the sweetening effect rather than to produce the starch needed.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Make it and report back!

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Potato flour I might be able to countenance. But for that recipe to pretend that huge lumps of actual potato are appropriate ingredients for a chocolate cake I will not get behind!

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Huh. I really need a picture of that. Would it not just be a huge stodgy lump?

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

I'm with you. At best, that's not a cake, it's a cold pudding.

[birdsflying]

I think, if it is lumpy, it's been done wrong! I may now make this cake recipe to see but I am pretty sure you wouldn't necessarily know there was potato in it unless you'd read the recipe!

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

But I HAVE read it! And I cannot now unread it, so though I await your experience with interest I will KNOW.

[ruudboy.livejournal.com]

Will do!

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

I LIKE huge stodgy lumps! (Evidence: http://pics.livejournal.com/silvante/pic/001350f6/g69)

[whatsagirlgotta.livejournal.com]

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<a href=""http://www.annamariavolpi.com/noodle_kugel.html">Sort of, but Jewish people have been making it for years!</a>

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that does look very nice.

[whatsagirlgotta.livejournal.com]

I know, I think I saw someone make it on Come Dine with Me once, I would say I am intrigued but would require dinner guests to share it with in order to make the leap to actually making it.

[anglaisepaon.livejournal.com]

I've made cake with avocado before, and it makes it lovely and creamy, but potato? That's just bonkers.

But chocolate and orange cake sounds lovely. Did you wake up thinking CAKE or was it for something special?

[ecila-etc.livejournal.com]

I saw a post about that a few months ago. I thought the same thing and was told by loads of people that actually it was great. But it stuck in my head, and so when we had a glut of potatoes a couple of weeks ago, I tried it.

Seriously, it works! You have to really mash the potatoes though, you don't want lumps!

(I couldn't quite bring myself to add the orange though... made me think of chips dipped in maya gold.. urgh!)

[whatho.livejournal.com]

Hm. That's a bit early 1940s for my liking.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Well! Did it not taste very weird indeed?

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Yes. I can see that if we were rationed there might be an issue, but we're not. We can have potatoes all we like, but not in cake if we don't want.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I found it while I was getting a recipe to make Alice's birthday cake. I went with Mary Berry's chocolate cake recipe, with roux icing, and it's AWESOME.

[ecila-etc.livejournal.com]

There really isn't that much potato in it to cause a taste. A lot less that carrot or courgette cake. All the potatoes really do is help keep it from getting too dry.

I suspect, however, that one of the reasons this cake is always chocolate is that the cocoa helps mask any underlying tattie-ness.

I tried it on the other three people I live with plus two friends who happened to drop by as it was coming out the oven and they all loved it. It's not the BEST chocolate cake I've ever made, but a nice one. Probably work well iced too.

[birdsflying]

I made the cake yesterday and it was nom! The potatoe gives it a lovely lightness and moist crumb and I promise you can not see or taste it. You have to mash it up quite smooth and then it gets everything stirred in, so no lumps are found.