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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. So I thought that I know a fair few people who are coeliacs or have issues with gluten, so thought that I'd give the recipe a try. After all, carrots, beetroot & courgettes frequently turn up in cakes and/or muffins so why not potato?
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 almonds/almond meal
30g butter/ 30ml olive oil
½tsp fine sea salt
finely chopped lemon zest
5 large eggs
vanilla or almond essence, optional
Method
Lemon/passionfruit drizzle sauce
Ingredients
50-100ml lemon juice (or 10-15 passionfruit or 50ml elderflower cordial etc)
100 ml water
10-50g sugar (or honey or maple syrup).
Method
This last photo is taken without the drizzle because we wanted to know what it was like beforehand and you can not tell it is made with mashed potato!
It isn't sweet, just a hint of sweetness and similarly the lemon zest is only really just coming through. You could easily alter the flavour by using almond essence or even rose water if that's what you fancied.
I accidentally overcooked mine, running into an issue with my oven following a power outage earlier in the day which prevented it heating up - it just looked like it was and then I forgot to drop the temperature so the cake sank. The original instructions actually say an 18cm cake tin. I can't see that working at all. I think it should be 25-28cm personally. I used 23cm and the cake is deeper than the pictures on my source. Next time I'll try my 10" cake tin.
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. So I thought that I know a fair few people who are coeliacs or have issues with gluten, so thought that I'd give the recipe a try. After all, carrots, beetroot & courgettes frequently turn up in cakes and/or muffins so why not potato?
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 almonds/almond meal
30g butter/ 30ml olive oil
½tsp fine sea salt
finely chopped lemon zest
5 large eggs
vanilla or almond essence, optional
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, finely chopped lemon zest ( & vanilla or almond essence if using) 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).
- Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin and bake for 45-60 minutes. Use a toothpick to test when it is cooked. It should come out totally clean. Remove the cake from the oven allow to cool completely. Note if you are adding a syrup to it, you'll want to only cool for 20-30 minutes before drizzling over the syrup.
Lemon/passionfruit drizzle sauce
Ingredients
50-100ml lemon juice (or 10-15 passionfruit or 50ml elderflower cordial etc)
100 ml water
10-50g sugar (or honey or maple syrup).
Method
- If using passionfruit, slice to top off the fruit (similar to a boiled egg) and scoop the seeds & juice out. Add to a pan with the water & sugar (to taste - this really is your choice! Use no sugar for a tart lemon or passionfruit sauce. This is our preference.) and bring to the boil. Simmer for 5 minutes.
- Pass through a sieve if using a fruit & seeds at this stage, using the back of a spoon to extract as much juice as possible. Return to the pan & simmer until a thickish syrup is acheived (think of single cream.).
- Now allow to cool to a safe temperature.
- Prick the cake many, many times over evenly both in distribution of pricks and in depth. The deeper the depth of the pricks the better the drizzle will reach all of the cake! Now spoon feed the cake as much or as little of the sauce as you want! Leave overnight to cool completely.
It isn't sweet, just a hint of sweetness and similarly the lemon zest is only really just coming through. You could easily alter the flavour by using almond essence or even rose water if that's what you fancied.
I accidentally overcooked mine, running into an issue with my oven following a power outage earlier in the day which prevented it heating up - it just looked like it was and then I forgot to drop the temperature so the cake sank. The original instructions actually say an 18cm cake tin. I can't see that working at all. I think it should be 25-28cm personally. I used 23cm and the cake is deeper than the pictures on my source. Next time I'll try my 10" cake tin.
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