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I originally made this cake as a lemon & blueberry cake which was great, but I wanted a chocolate cake today, so decided to modify the original recipe to include chocolate...
I marking this up as a retro recipe for a reason.
It apparently comes from an old Italian cookbook (Pellegrino Artusi, Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (1891)) and at first I was kind of surprised by it but the more I looked online the more I found mashed potato in a limited quantity being used in sweet cake recipes.
This is one recipe you do not want either the potato skins or almond skins.
My source - Artusi's potato cake from a century old recipe - Juls' Kitchen
Ingredients
700g starchy/floury potatoes (good mashers!)
150g sugar (you can use icing sugar here)
75g ground blanched almonds/almond meal
50g cacao powder
100g bar of dark chocolate (check no milk for dairy free version)
30g butter/ 30ml olive oil
½tsp fine sea salt
6 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence/paste
Method
Serving photos will come later
I marking this up as a retro recipe for a reason.
It apparently comes from an old Italian cookbook (Pellegrino Artusi, Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (1891)) and at first I was kind of surprised by it but the more I looked online the more I found mashed potato in a limited quantity being used in sweet cake recipes.
This is one recipe you do not want either the potato skins or almond skins.
My source - Artusi's potato cake from a century old recipe - Juls' Kitchen
Ingredients
700g starchy/floury potatoes (good mashers!)
150g sugar (you can use icing sugar here)
75g ground blanched almonds/almond meal
50g cacao powder
100g bar of dark chocolate (check no milk for dairy free version)
30g butter/ 30ml olive oil
½tsp fine sea salt
6 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence/paste
Method
- Preheat an oven to 180° C (fan assist 160°C). Line and grease a 25 or 28cm (10-11") diameter baking tin. Ideally a loose bottomed one, better still a springform one.
- Peel, dice and steam the potatoes until they are falling apart. Size dosen't matter for the dice, just that they are completely cooked.
- Whilst the potatoes are cooking, grind the sugar with the almonds until a fine flour. Just use a spice grinder or clean coffee mill. Make sure the flour will go through a seive - so no lumps!
- Uncover the potatoes when cooked and allow them to cool a little and dry out. Now mash them until totally and completely smooth. I used the balloon whisk on my Kenwood chef mixer to achieve the totally smooth mash/puree. That is one thing the source of this recipe is very clear about: no lumps. Do not use a food processor (it will over do it and turn the mixture into that wierd plastic gloop).
- Add the butter or oil to the potato mixture and beat in well.
- Now add the sugar/almond flour, cacao powder, vanilla essence and the salt and beat in well, again until totally smooth.
- Now beat in the eggs, one at a time whisking well after each addition. My mixture changed consistency after the second egg becoming much more like a fluffy cake batter at this point. Now beat well for about 10 minutes (just watch for your mixer motor getting too warm). Stop and scrap down the sides periodically.
- Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin and bake for 45-50 minutes. Use a toothpick to test when it is cooked. It should come out totally clean. Allow to cool before extracting from cake tin.
Serving photos will come later
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