Sweet Potato Birthday Cake!!!

When my mother in law’s birthday rolled around I had two goals in mind.

Make something vegan

Make something she’s never had before.

Neither of those were very hard, but narrowing down the list took some time until my husband reminded me how much she LOVES walnuts. I narrowed it down to what flavors worked best, nixing the brownies idea because that’s my favorite, not hers. But I landed on sweet potatoes, somehow. Some way.

Sweet potatoes. I should tell you that while they are sold here, sweet potatoes aren’t really part of the Romanian diet which is kind of a bummer because I love them. then again, I love all potatoes so maybe I’m biased.

The first thing you want to do is get the potatoes in some water to boil. Scrub the potato good with a veggie brush (hack: I use a nail brush to clean my hard skinned veggies) and drop them in the water whole. I find this keeps from getting too much water into the potato mix. Once it’s cooled enough to peel and mash, set aside and get started on the rest of the ingredients.

This is the Arche brand VegEgg that I am always raving to you guys about! You measure it out (7.5 ml of powder to 30 ml of water) and blend it, letting it stand for five minutes before it’s ready. This is something else you’ll want to do ahead of time so it’s ready when you’re ready to use it.

Next is basic cake making, blend the vegan butter and brown sugar (I use bone-char free Billington’s dark brown soft sugar, check out a more extensive list here) until well blended and then add the eggs. Most ‘traditional’ recipes will tell you to add the eggs one at a time but I add it slowly in a steady stream instead. Then you combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, ground cinnamon & ginger and blend.

Add dry ingredients to wet, alternating with 1 cup of almond or other non-animal milk.

The glaze came out a little thinner than I wanted, probably because the vegan butter I used didn’t have enough fat so it never thickened enough to cling to the sweet potato cake. But it did seep into the cake, making it even more moist and delicious. Best of all, Mama loved it!