Retro Recipe Chocolate Potato Cake

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I originally made this cake as a lemon & blueberry cake which was great, but I wanted a chocolate cake today, so decided to modify the original recipe to include chocolate...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
  1. 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.
  2. Peel, dice and steam the potatoes until they are falling apart. Size dosen't matter for the dice, just that they are completely cooked.
  3. 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!
  4. 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).
  5. Add the butter or oil to the potato mixture and beat in well.
  6. Now add the sugar/almond flour, cacao powder, vanilla essence and the salt and beat in well, again until totally smooth.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
92021


92022


Serving photos will come later

92027
 
Last edited:
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
  1. 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.
  2. Peel, dice and steam the potatoes until they are falling apart. Size dosen't matter for the dice, just that they are completely cooked.
  3. 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!
  4. 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).
  5. Add the butter or oil to the potato mixture and beat in well.
  6. Now add the sugar/almond flour, cacao powder, vanilla essence and the salt and beat in well, again until totally smooth.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
View attachment 92021

View attachment 92022

Serving photos will come later

View attachment 92027
That’s a really cool idea.
 
It looks so densely chocolate and sort of fudgy textured. I'm not a chocolate lover (as you know) but it seems to hit the mark for those that are.
 
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