Chocolate Roasted Potato Cake

E and I recently hosted a double-birthday/holiday potluck. My friend whose birthday was approaching said she wanted something "chocolate," when I asked her what I could bake her -- not terribly helpful, but she's also super laid back, so I wasn't too concerned either.

I, however, don't like chocolate cake and even though I wasn't planning to eat any of it (even if I'd made it gluten-free, using my standby chocolate gluten-free cake recipe), I wanted to at least try to make something that wouldn't, well, be dry and tasteless. And, I told myself, I'm not on a budget that really lets me try multiple variations of things. So, whatever I did with a chocolate cake, I needed to make sure that it was something that I wouldn't mess up--or that I'd have alternate ingredients for if I did mess it up.

E suggested the brownies I posted in November. Doable, definitely. Even if I messed up the cake. But, this was an opportunity to try making something new and how could I pass that up? In recent weeks, I've felt barely able to write--or even think about writing--much less do anything more than put rather routine (for me) food in my mouth. I haven't wanted to be creative. My friend's birthday though, seemed like a good opportunity to spark some of that kitchen-creativity again. So, I thought: chocolate. And I thought: birthday. To me, this surely equals some sort of cake.

I remembered my friend Kim, a talented writer and generally wonderful person, had a potato party while I lived in the Midwest. She'd bid on a bushel of potatoes during an auction and won--and wanted help eating them all. One of the things she made: chocolate potato cake. And, I remembered seeing recipes for potato cakes (and sauerkraut cakes) in my parents' German cookbook.

I remember trying Kim's chocolate potato cake--before I went GF--and thinking that it was surprisingly good--and delightfully moist. And this, I decided, was what I wanted to make. But, most of the recipes I looked at called for unseasoned mashed potatoes. I understood that, to some extent. The process of creating mashed potatoes necessarily creates a little additional moistness. But I know how to make things more moist. I wanted to subtly up the flavor a little. I'm in favor of roasting things--especially in the winter, when I can also use it to warm up the house (though I pan roasted the potato for this, so not applicable). And because I didn't have enough potato for any of the recipes I looked at, I added a couple of carrots to the roasting process. I always have carrots on hand.

I also thought about making this cake into a Mexican chocolate cake, with cayenne and cinnamon. But I couldn't bring myself to do that either--at least not to the whole cake. It can surprise come as a surprise if you're not expecting all those extra flavors in your cake.

Chocolate Roasted Potato Cake

1 cup unseasoned mashed potato/carrot mixture (for me, this was one medium potato and two large carrots all finely diced which I pan-roasted for about 45 minutes before processing in my food processor until nearly smooth)

1 cup buttermilk

1 ¾ cups sifted all purpose flour

1 cup unsweeted dutch cocoa powder

2 1/4 teaspoons of baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

½ cup salted butter (softened)

1 ¾ cups granulated sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 large eggs

1/3 cup mayonnaise

Confectioners’ sugar for garnish

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans and set aside.

Place mashed potatoes/carrots into medium bowl. With a small whisk, gradually beat in buttermilk to form smooth mixture.

Sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

In a large bowl, use an electric mixer to combine the butter, sugar, and vanilla extract until well blended. .

Add eggs and blend well. Add mayonnaise and beat at medium speed for 2 minutes.

At lowest speed, alternate adding both the dry ingredients (from step 3) and smashed veggies (a little dry ingredients, a little smashed veggies, a little dry, a little smashed veggies etc.) until all are incorporated.

Turn equal amounts of batter into prepared baking pans. Bake in preheated oven 27 to 32 minutes (for a 10” cake pan; 15-18 minutes for cupcakes), rotating once about halfway during the baking process.

Cake is cooked when a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. When done remove to a cooling rack. Cool completely before removing from pans and cutting. If desired, frost or sift confectioners’ sugar over top of cake after the cake has cooled completely.

Note: The pictures you see of the iced cupcakes use just a basic buttercream.

Fancy Dipped Apples, Cupcake Monsters, and Were-rabbits

Apple of My Eye

No recipe this time. I'll just put that out there right now. But I've been walking past these apples at least once a day for the past week (or at least ones that look like these apples--hopefully not actually the same apples) and they were too Halloween-y adorable not to share. Something to aspire to, perhaps, if I want to ruin a perfectly good apple in order to decorate it.

Were-rabbits

A friend of mine went to culinary school and I remember listening to her talking about her chocolates classes -- and being amazed by the beautiful creations she came up with. Creations like those, and like these apples and were-rabbits, are exactly the type of thing that makes me want to seriously investigate how to work with chocolate, maybe even take classes. But then, I think of all the things I could better use that money for. And so instead, I consider possibly working at a place that would teach me how to make creations like these. I haven't ruled that out yet.


One thing I've got to say about Halloween--and other holidays--is that it certainly makes walking past bakeries, chocolate shops, and other such places much more interesting. I've already posted a picture of a "pan muerto" from our local growers market. In fact, I like window displays a lot when it's holiday time--especially when people aren't too terribly concerned about the political correctness of their displays. I think too, even in my Halloween grumpiness this year, the window displays in town have helped me feel a little more in the spirit. It's hard to not feel a little bit of fondness for the holiday when there are skeletons in wedding dresses, apples like these, little monster cupcakes, etc. Last year, in my previous town, I took pictures of fancy cupcakes at my favorite bakery (pictured left). The lighting was pretty horrible for pictures, but you get the general idea.

Such cute monsters...though I'm not
a fan of the pipe cleaners.

In my mind, one of the big problems with specialty cupcakes is that amount of frosting that's used. Maybe I only feel this way because I'm not a huge fan of frosting--or dye--but also because these specialty cupcakes (even ones that are much less fancy-decorated than these) cost so much, when really the ingredients are often very cheap to buy. The profit margin must be huge--and for products, that when I've tried them, aren't really worth it.

Speaking of things I'm not a fan of: caramel apples. That's a little ironic, perhaps, considering that was the impetus of this post. However, I don't understand why anyone would ruin a perfectly delicious apple by putting caramel on it--much less dipping it caramel and peanut butter. Or caramel and M&Ms. Or, well you get the point. I don't care much caramel, but even if I did, this just seems like a sugar-overload. I'd love to hear from a few of you who like caramel apples. Why do you like them and when do you eat them? People's food memories are always great.

The average American eats about 120 apples a year (hm, considering I pretty much eat an apple a day most of the year, that makes me concerned for the low consumption by other people). The average caramel apple has between 230-340 calories, according to one site I found. But these are (white) chocolate dipped apples--and probably "cost" a lot more than 700 calories. I'm guessing this number, because one of the only uber-indulgent caramel apples I could find statistics on, Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory's Apple Pie Caramel Apple, supposedly contains more than 700 calories.

Something maybe we should eat more of? The relatives of these carved babies. Pumpkins you carve are edible but they're not super good like the smaller pie pumpkins. E, her boyfriend, and her co-worker K carved these beauties last night. E's boyfriend and K both carved pumpkins they'd grown and I'm proud (or something like that) to say E's pumpkin was "pamper'd." The label said so. Hers is the eye. And it's a little blocked by the boyfriend. Alas. Happy Halloween.

K's kitty in the window, A's Jack, E's Eye

Roasted Carrot Carrot Cake (and muffins!), Gluten-Free

On a mountain

It must be fall. I'm in serious baking mode. French-style bread. Gluten-free risen bread. Monster cookies. Brownies (semi-failure). Chocolate pumpkin cake. Carrot cake. If only I had more time. The day I made this cake, I also hiked a nearby mountain with a co-worker and then volunteered to yank invasive species out of the ground at a local park for three hours in advance of Make-a-Difference Day since I'll be at work on the actual day. Then, I went home to walk S (okay, okay, hike with S) and call a couple of people who I've been playing phone tag with for a week or so. There's so much to cram into weekends.

I had this much carrot
when I gave up grating

To say the least, this cake was inspired by general feeling of "there's no way I'm going to stand here for 45 minutes and hand-grate carrots for this carrot cake," which I was making at the request of my supervisor for another co-worker who's birthday had recently passed. I said yes, because I love to bake (and I knew I could try and make it gluten-free) and when I said yes, I had no idea how much time I'd invest into other activities during my weekend.

Rather than grate the carrots, I decided to pan roast them (which I define as different from sauteing only because I didn't stir them very often at all) until they were very soft and then mash them before adding them into the cake batter. Pan roasting the carrots let me:

1) work on making dinner, which was good, since I'd only had a carrot since breakfast

2) do a little kitchen clean-up

3) mix up other cake ingredients
4) turn on Chain of Lakes because I had carrot-free hands

5) feel less irritated by the very slow process of hand-grating carrots (I did hand grate about 1/2 cup before I got fed up with the process and you could do this too, if you were so inclined--I just added the grated carrot with the mashed carrots to the cake batter.)

Roasting the carrots also makes them sweeter and deepens their carrot-y flavor.

Look at those brown sugar-spots

The base recipe for this carrot cake came from one of my favorite carrot cake recipes--a vegan recipe (though I used regular cream cheese in the images you see--I have made it the other way and actually prefer the way Tofutti  Better Than Cream Cheese tastes to regular cream cheese, but that's just me--because the person I'm making this for is neither GF or vegan).

I'm still experimenting with gluten-free flours and trying to avoid that not-so-lovely GF flavor. Since I started helping a friend out with her pie stand at the local growers market, I've heard several people say "I don't like anything gluten-free," to which I have a hard time not being snarky ("do you realize how much you eat that's naturally gluten-free?"). But to be fair, a lot of gluten-free baked things not only taste gluten-free, but they have a particularly grainy texture that's not so appealing. In this cake, I used a mixture of brown rice flour, GF oat flour, quinoa flour, and millet flour.

I poured the batter into an 8x8 pan and still had plenty of batter left to make a dozen cupcakes (muffins, I'm not adding extra sugar to them all and if I were to intentionally make them as muffins, rather than cake, I'd probably scale back the sugar by at least 1/2 a cup--I think it's far too sweet right now for muffins).

Vegan Roasted Carrot Carrot Cake (Gluten-Free)

2 pounds carrots, washed and sliced into coins

Olive oil

3/4 cup brown rice flour

3/4 cup oat flour

1/2 cup quinoa flour

1/4 cup millet flour

2 teaspoons guar gum

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon allspice

1/4 teaspoon each cardamom, cloves, nutmeg

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup light brown cane sugar 

3/4 cup cane sugar

3 egg equivalents (I've used both flax eggs and Ener-G Egg replacers with this recipe, both work fine)

1 teaspoon vanilla

3/4 cup vegetable oil

1 14-oz can crushed pineapple, drained

1 cup shredded coconut

nuts and raisins, optional

Faux Cream Cheese Frosting
(again, you could use regular cream cheese and butter if you're not vegan or preparing this for a vegan, but this is really good frosting)

1 8-oz package vegan cream cheese

1/3 cup vegan margarine, softened

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups vegan powdered sugar, sifted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (really, you should do this after you've mashed the carrots to save energy, but this type of information is usually at the front of recipes, so here you go). Roast the carrots in a saute pan, lightly coated in oil, over medium heat, stirring occasionally until the carrots are beginning to caramelize and are very soft.

Carrots ready to pan roast

If you're under time constraints* or your carrots just don't seem to be getting soft, you can add a little water to the pan and cover it for a few minutes to steam them after they've begun to brown. Let the carrots cool a little and then mash them until you've got very few chunks. You will want about 1 1/2 cups of mashed carrots total.

Carrots, almost ready to mash--get them a little browner than this

While the carrots are roasting, in a medium bowl, mix flours, guar gum, baking soda, baking powder, spices, and salt.

In a large bowl, mix sugar and egg replacer until creamy (use an electric mixer if you can get your hands on one--it makes life so much easier). Add the vanilla and combine, then add the vegetable oil and mix well. Mix wet and dry ingredients together, combining well (one of the great things about gluten-free foods is that it's a bit harder to over mix). Stir in the carrots, pineapple, and coconut. Add nuts and/or raisins, if using.

Grease a pan (9" x  9" pan for a thicker cake--I promise it won't fit into an 8" x 8"--or 9" x 13" for a thinner cake) and smooth the batter into the prepared pan. Bake 40-45 minutes (for a thicker cake--reduce time if you're using a 9" x 13"), or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let the cake cool entirely before frosting.

Above and Below: Roasted Carrot Carrot Cake Muffins
(1/2 of which turn into cupcakes because E requested  it)

For the frosting:

Beat together the cream cheese and margarine in a medium-large bowl until smooth. Add the vanilla and incorporate well. 1/2 cup a a time, beat in the powdered sugar. Beat in the powdered sugar until smooth before adding more. The frosting should be very thick. On a humid day, you might have to add more powdered sugar.

Frosted Cupcake

*For my carrots to get soft enough to mash, it took about 45 minutes of pan roasting in a medium-large saute pan over medium to medium-high heat and I did add about 1/4 of water and let them steam for about 10 minutes at the end to make sure all the carrot coins would mash pretty well.

Reese's Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting

Not long ago, I was baking with my friend Annie of Simple Gifts. We were in the mood to experiment and we wanted something we could decorate. We finally decided to make cupcakes. We set our friend Lauren on the task of finding a straight-forward cucpcake recipe that we could stick Reese's miniatures in and when I vetoed chocolate cupcakes, Lauren decided on a simple vanilla cupcake--an Amy Sedaris recipe.

Amy Sedaris is the author of Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People -- this is a super-fun (and somewhat snarky/humorous) book and I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, among others. The cupcake recipe we used comes from I Like You and your can find the recipe here.

Beating up the Cake Batter--it always feels so good!

Nestle in a Reese's Cup (Mini)

Cover wiht more batter until cups are 2/3 full

We placed a miniature Reese's cup in each of the cupcake tins after we'd filled it halfway with batter, and then covered the Reese's cup with batter, until each cup was about 2/3 full. We used a combination of mini-cupcakes and regular-sized cupcakes and with the mini-cakes we cut the miniature Reese's cups in half.

Once the cupcakes baked and cooled, we topped them with the peanut butter frosting found modified from the recipe found here. Our changes appear below.

Peanut Butter Frosting

1 cup powdered sugar

1 cup creamy peanut butter (we used reduced fat, because that's what we had on hand)

5 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

1/3 cup skim milk

We piped the frosting onto the cupcakes and then sprinkled the top with chopped dark chocolate--and we couldn't resist adding M&Ms to a few of them.