SatNavSaysStraightOn

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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
  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, finely chopped lemon zest ( & vanilla or almond essence if using) 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).
  8. 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
  1. 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.
  2. 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.).
  3. Now allow to cool to a safe temperature.
  4. 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.
I know, you're thinking I've lost the plot. I know.



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.
 
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Looks good - lovely contrast between the colour of the crumb an the crust. It brings a whole new meaning to how we normally think of 'potato cakes'. Where did you get the info about the tin size? I couldn't spot it in the link.
 
That does look lovely indeed! Love the ingredients, I would sub the sugar ...but else, yum.
To be honest, you'll hardly realise there is sugar in it. I'm using a homemade powdered sugar from raw sugar but i guess you could make powdered coconut sugar if you wanted to. I don't think a liquid sugar would work to be honest.

It isn't a sweet cake by any means.
It made 12 generous servings (the original size did) so that's 2½ tsp of sugar (12½g) per slice without the lemon drizzle. I know people who put more sugar in a single cup of coffee.

I'm making it again today using a larger springform tin.
 
I made it again today because i wanted to test out a different size cake tin and try another flavour. I tried the 9 inch springform tin this time which was definitely better.

I doubled the vanilla essence (to 2tsp), added ½tsp cream of tartar and omitted the lemon zest (an error on my behalf that worked really well).

I also cooked it for longer. After 30 minutes, I covered it with foil and cooked it for probably another hour, testing at 60mins, 75mins and 90 mins with a toothpick. The center took a while to cook through completely. I was cooking it at 160°C in a fan adjusted oven.





This was a very nice version. Not sweet, but moist and light with just enough blueberries. Hubby tried to come back for seconds.
 
To be honest, you'll hardly realise there is sugar in it. I'm using a homemade powdered sugar from raw sugar but i guess you could make powdered coconut sugar if you wanted to. I don't think a liquid sugar would work to be honest.

It isn't a sweet cake by any means.
It made 12 generous servings (the original size did) so that's 2½ tsp of sugar (12½g) per slice without the lemon drizzle. I know people who put more sugar in a single cup of coffee.

I'm making it again today using a larger springform tin.
In that case, I should be able to consume it, I do dark choc with 18 g of sugar per 100 g, just one single square, and it works, so possibly it is 1,8 g sugar...in that single square...
Coconut sugar? sounds good, never tried it...I though about dates or pure apple mousse, or banana, but if sweet is not the point, I will try coconut sugar...love all things coconut....
Thank you!
 
In that case, I should be able to consume it, I do dark choc with 18 g of sugar per 100 g, just one single square, and it works, so possibly it is 1,8 g sugar...in that single square...
Coconut sugar? sounds good, never tried it...I though about dates or pure apple mousse, or banana, but if sweet is not the point, I will try coconut sugar...love all things coconut....
Thank you!
The issue with other sweetness such as dates is that the sugar added needs to be very light, as in powder rather than a heavy sugar such as dates. You're effectively making a potato meringue (using both egg yolk & white)....
Sweet definitely isn't the point with this recipe. Coconut sugar is in crystal form so can easily be powdered. It's petty much unrefined, but it will make the cake much darker in colour.

He tried?:roflmao:
Yep. His knuckles verses the knife. I just tapped the end of it a couple of times on the chopping board whilst looking at him giving him that look. Lol
 
The issue with other sweetness such as dates is that the sugar added needs to be very light, as in powder rather than a heavy sugar such as dates. You're effectively making a potato meringue (using both egg yolk & white)....
Sweet definitely isn't the point with this recipe. Coconut sugar is in crystal form so can easily be powdered. It's petty much unrefined, but it will make the cake much darker in colour.


Yep. His knuckles verses the knife. I just tapped the end of it a couple of times on the chopping board whilst looking at him giving him that look. Lol
I see, thank you so much for the clarification, it did look very light in your pictures...will buy coco sugar... and possibly attempt the cake next weekend. I also used the potatoes for a lunch dish...so potatoes too I need to buy.

I love humorous stories from a married couple:D:love:
 
I just tapped the end of it a couple of times on the chopping board whilst looking at him giving him that look.
That reminded me of a funny moment at my parents', it was this Christmas, we went for lunch, my daughter and I. We took some photos, and my Mom looked at my Dad and pointed her finger to where he should stand. It was so funny. Not a word, just a look and a finger movement. I mean, it is not that unusual as they are both deaf, that the communicate non verbally, but her look was like a military command:D
We laughed about it my daughter and I.

And they are both so fragile now. She is somewhat better, I saw them today. So that is good. My Dad has shoulder pain now, but all of it is just a neverending circle...may it not get worse...

No comparison of the looks, it just reminded me of THE look...lol
 
Sounds and looks lovely. Potato bread is very popular here in Northern Ireland, but this is something completely different.
 
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