Sweet Potato Spelt Rum Bundt Cake with Chocolate Sour Cream Ganache

I had several sweet potatoes in my pantry that were yearning to be cooked, and I went back and forth in my head as to whether to bake a pie, or a cheesecake. I eventually settled on a bundt-cake, since it was more amenable to vegan alternatives, and also baking a cake would require  less effort than a cheesecake, as with the latter I would have had to prepare the cookie crust in addition to the batter.  

First, a few notes:

Most recipes with sweet potatoes, as with most fall ingredients, have added cinnamon, or a combination of cinnamon and nutmeg as default spices. But you will not see any cinnamon in most of my dessert recipes,  because in my opinion it is so overpowering, that you mostly taste the cinnamon and not the main flavor after which the recipe is named, whether pumpkin,  sweet potato, or apples.

In the US, cinnamon is so widely used as a default ingredient to accompany certain fillings, that people are probably so used to it that they don’t realize that it actually covers, rather than enhance, the main flavor. Many may disagree with me on this, and perhaps, in part because cinnamon evokes childhood memories, from the first gingerbread, to s’mores around a campfire, to grandma’s homemade apple pie. But to me, it is so pervasive, that I like to escape from it, and I do so in my kitchen.  

So this sweet potato recipe is sans powdered spices, but it has freshly grated ginger instead,  although you can substitute or add the other spices as dictated by your taste buds.    

If you cannot do without cinnamon or nutmeg, I would recommend at least  using real cinnamon sticks and pulverize them in a mortar and pestle, and use real nutmeg and grate it on the spot. I would stay away from store-bought powdered spices, as most of them have a stale undertone.  

For this recipe, I used mostly spelt flour, since I was low on all-purpose flour and I wanted to bake my cake right then, without needing another grocery trip.  Using spelt flour  increases the nutritional value of this dessert, as it is rich in minerals, such as copper, iron, zinc, magnesium and phosphorus, and also dietary fiber. But by all means, you can opt for an all white all-purpose flour cake.

I am also listing vegan alternatives in the ingredients, for an equally amazing vegan cake option.

Here I used the creaming method of mixing the mashed potatoes and oil with the sugar, and then adding the eggs.  I am certain that the egg foaming method, in which the eggs are beaten with the sugar first, will yield an equally awesome cake.  I just went with what I felt most comfortable with, but I may try the foaming method next time, just to see which one I prefer.

Lastly, I use about half the sugar of most recipes, which call for 2 cups, whereas I use 1 cup. You can probably go somewhere in between, but 2 cups is way too much sugar in my opinion.

Ingredients:

1 ½ cup of sifted spelt flour

½ cup of sifted all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon of wheat germ

1 tablespoon baking powder (or 1 tsp each of baking powder and baking soda)

1 tablespoon of grated fresh ginger

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

2 cups of mashed, sweet potatoes

3 eggs

⅔  cup of dark rum

½  room temperature water (for a vegan option) or milk

¾  cups of brown sugar

¼ cup of granulated sugar

¾  cup vegetable oil (for a vegan option) or melted unsalted butter, or ½ oil ½ butter

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup dried cherries or dried cranberries

For the chocolate ganache:

About 4.4  ounces of dark chocolate (I used 10 squares of Trader Joes’ "Pound Plus Imported from Belgium dark chocolate")

1 tablespoon of corn syrup or agave nectar

about 4 tablespoons of sour cream

water or milk as needed, to dilute the ganache

Special equipment: bundt pan

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

Lightly grease a 10-cup bundt pan with melted butter or oil spray. I recommend brushing the oil or butter in every nook and cranny of the bundt pan with a kitchen brush.  Covering every area of the bundt pan will ensure that parts of your cake will not stick to the pan when you flip it over after baking. Also, before flouring the pan, make sure that all the extra grease has dripped off of it, otherwise you will end up with little puddles of grease at the bottom of the pan, which will result in flattened peaks. Once the pan is evenly coated with the oil or butter, then add some flour and ensure it coats the whole pan. Remove excess flour by flipping the pan over the sink and tapping it gently. Now the pan is ready for the batter.

In a bowl, whisk together the flours, wheat germ, baking powder, and salt. Set the mixture aside. In a separate large mixing bowl, beat the the sweet potatoes, the oil (or melted butter) and sugar using an electric mixer, until smooth. Mix in the  rum, grated ginger,  and water (or milk). Add the eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Do not overmix. Beat in the vanilla. Add flour mixture; beat just until blended. Again, do not overmix. Fold in the dried fruit.  Transfer batter to the prepared pan.

Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, about 1 hour.  Let the cake cool in the tin for 15 minutes and invert onto a serving platter or cake stand.

While the cake is cooling, make the ganache:

Melt the chocolate and milk, or water,  in a saucepan on low heat directly on the stove  or double boiler. While whisking constantly, add the syrup and the sour cream and continue whisking until well incorporated. If it’s very runny, let it sit for a minute or so to thicken, if it’s too dense, add more milk or water and whisk again until incorporated. Drizzle over the cake.

For a vegan alternative, omit the sour cream and use vegan chocolate. I do not have experience with vegan sour cream so I am not sure how it would fare being heated.

Lastly, instead of chocolate ganache, one can drizzle with a rum glaze, which can be made with vegan butter.

4 tablespoons unsalted butter (or vegan butter)

2 to 3 tablespoons dark rum

2 cups confectioners' sugar

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan with the rum. Remove from the heat and whisk in the confectioners' sugar until smooth. Drizzle over the cooled cake.

Mini Carrot Ginger Chocolate Chip Cakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Carrot bread and carrot cupcakes are two of my favorite, easy go to recipes with carrots.  The recipe is the same for both, except that the cooking time is reduced by about half for the cupcakes, and  I have adapted  mine from classic carrot bread recipes, with the following variations:

Given that I am not a fan of  adding cinnamon to anything and everything, I do not  include it in many of my recipes, as I believe it masks the flavors that we want to highlight.  On the other hand, ginger confers a fresh element of spiciness, while the candied ginger provide  additional textural complexity. The orange zest is almost a must in this recipe, as it complements the carrots and ginger. Going full circle,  both ginger and orange pair well with chocolate, so I have included some mini chocolate chips. As a trade off, I add some oats and milled flax seeds, which provide whole grain and omega-3. These mini cakes are delicious and nutritious, but you can choose to omit or substitute some of the optional ingredients, as you prefer.

Ingredients:

• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• ½  cup canola oil
• ¼ cup of  butter (or vegan butter) at room temperature plus extra for the cupcake pans, unless silicone
• 1 ½  cup of peeled freshly grated carrots
• 2 tablespoons minced candied or crystallized ginger
• 2 teaspoons of freshly grated ginger
• zest of 1 organic orange
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tbsp of milled flax seeds
• ¼ cup of rolled oats
• 1 cup organic sugar
• ¼ cup mini semi sweet chocolate chips
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 tsp of vanilla essence
• 1 pinch of salt

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°F.  Grease an 8-cup muffin pan (or 12-cup for mini cakes) by brushing inside every slot with some melted butter. If using silicone cups, there is no need to grease them.In a medium bowl, combine the butter, oil,  sugar  and eggs, and with an electric mixer (either hand-held or standing mixer) cream the mixture until smooth. Mix the vanilla essence and grated fresh ginger into  the creamed batter.Sift the flour, baking powder and baking soda into a separate bowl, and mix in the oats and milled flax seeds. Add the salt.With a spatula, mix the  flour mixture into the batter, in two additions, until well incorporated and smooth. Fold in the carrots, crystallized ginger, orange zest and chocolate chips, a bit at a time until evenly incorporated into the batter.Spoon batter into greased muffin cups, filling each 3/4 full.Bake cupcakes until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 30 minutes. Turn cupcakes out onto racks and cool completely.

Even though these cakes carry enough flavor on their own, you can further jazz them up with cream cheese frosting, and drizzle with honey and sprinkle with chopped pistachios.

For the cream cheese frosting:

• 4 ounces unsalted butter, softened
• 4 ounces cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp honey for the drizzle
• 2 tbsp chopped (roasted if preferred) pistachios

Directions:

In a large bowl, beat together the butter and cream cheese with an electric mixer. With the mixer on low speed, add the powdered sugar a cup at a time until smooth and creamy. Beat in the vanilla extract.

Note that I use ½ of the sugar of most frosting recipes because I drizzle with honey. Also, the saltiness of the pistachios balances the sweetness nicely.

Food Saving and Repurposing Ideas

I don’t fancy being wasteful, so I am always compelled to make use of what I have in my kitchen before it goes bad. Although I must admit, as my husband points out, to avoid pitching $2 worth of ingredients, I will end up spending a lot more in time,  and additional ingredients, just  to save the one item that is about to expire. But that is beside the point...although he makes a good point.  Well, this weekend I was in this food saving mood, as that carton of buttermilk that was still sitting unopened in my refrigerator was begging to get utilized. So I decided to make homemade buttermilk pancakes, which the kids enjoyed with Nutella and/or real maple syrup. I made enough that they also had some for breakfast on Monday.  Pancake breakfast on a school morning is always a special treat.  

And while I was on this baking kick, I thought, why not use the remaining buttermilk to make fresh biscuits? And so everyone enjoyed one (or two..) for brunch with smoked salmon, avocados, grape tomatoes, baby greens, eggs (boiled or poached).

 But I wasn’t done yet!  You may have seen me post various assortments of cereal treats on my Facebook page "Kitchening with Francesca", and the reason being is that there is always leftover cereal at my house that nobody wants to consume, and rather than wasting it, I always enjoy experimenting with it to make treats. And most of the times they turn out good enough to eat :o) In fact, on this last round of experimenting, the chocolate chip soft bake cookies were such a hit with the kids, that they were gone by the next day.  For these, I adapted a chocolate chip cookie recipe by substituting some of the flour with flour obtained from organic oat and marshmallow cereal (all I did I put the cereal in a food processor (or vitamix blender) and reduced it to powder.  Because I used cereal which was already sweet, I of course used less sugar than the recipe called for.   For the whole grain granola treats, I used a mixture of raisin bran and granola, but the recipe is a bit more involved, so I will save that for another time. But I can assure you that not much is left of those couple dozen whole grain treats.

In the meantime, go ahead and experiment, and feel free to share your results.  

Happy saving, happy baking, happy savoring.

Summer Zucchini and Blueberries bread

With amazing taste, texture and fragrance, as well as being healthy, this bread will have you come back for more and more. And it is simple to make. This is a variation of the classic zucchini bread. It has more whole grain, less sugar, and added blueberries, which not only compliment the overall flavor with their tartness, but they add more antioxidants to this delicious bread. Instead of cinnamon, which I believe makes every cake/bread taste the same, as, in my opinion, instead of bringing out the flavor of the main ingredient it masks it, I add lemon zest, which adds to the fragrance and freshness. 

Ingredients

2 cups for shredded zucchini (from about 4 medium zucchini)

3/4 cup of fresh blueberries

1 1/2 cup of all purpose flour (sifted)

1/2 of whole wheat flour

1 cup of raw sugar (or your preferred ratio of granulated sugar and brown sugar)

2 eggs

1/4 cup of vegetable oil + 2 tbsp  of melted butter

1 tablespoon of ground flax seed (optional)

1/2 tsp of baking powder

1/2 tsp of baking soda

the zest of one organic lemon

a few tablespoons of sunflower seeds (optional)

a few tablespoons of pistachios

a pinch of salt

Directions

Preheat oven at 325F

In a medium bowl, with a handheld mixer at high speed, or a tabletop mixer, mix the eggs, sugar, oil/butter, until smooth (about a minute or so).  Add the flours, flax seed, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and mix at lower speed until fully incorporated. You will have a very thick mixture, which is needed to offset the wetness of the zucchini that you are about to incorporate. Fold in the zucchini with a spatula until evenly incorporated, then fold in the sunflower seeds, pistachios and lemon zest. 

Pour the evenly mixed batter in a plum cake mold which has been buttered and floured (unless it is guaranteed non-stick).

Bake at 325F in the middle rack  for about 1 hour, or until golden brown and/or if you run a toothpick through the cake it comes out dry.

Cooking time may vary depending on the oven, so it is good to check your bread about 1/2 way.

Once ready, remove from the oven and allow to cool before slicing and serving.

It tastes great accompanied with a dollop of  plan FAGE or Siggi's yogurt and some honey drizzle.

Enjoy

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