Sweet Potato Cake

The inspiration for this recipe is the Korean Sweet Potato Cake that is so popular at Korean celebrations. A sponge cake is layered with sweet potato cream filling. The sweet potato is cooked, mashed and added to the whipped cream. Cooked sweet potato  can also be added to the batter. This cake is not a favourite of mine nor my son.

I have wanted to make a sweet potato cake for some time and decided that I would for my grandchild's birthday as only her grandparents were coming for supper. The birthday party had been cancelled due to rain weather.

I was pleasantly surprised with the texture and the flavor of the cake.  The cake tasted very much like a carrot cake but seemed heavier in weight, although still moist and light.  In fact, my grandchild's grandfather instead it was a carrot cake and not a sweet potato cake.. Well in a way he was correct as it definitely was not a Korean Sweet Potato cake!

Most of the cakes I looked at on the web, cooked the sweet potato first and then added it into the batter at the end, much like a pumpkin cake.   I used a carrot cake recipe that I had made before. 

• 1 cup sugar
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon each of baking soda and baking powder
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• pinch of salt
• 4 large eggs
• 1 1/4 cups canola oil
• 3 cups grated sweet potato
• Walnuts would be nice to add.
• Preheat oven to 350
• Prepare a springform pan or  9x 13 pan
• Mix dry ingredients together in one bowl
• Mix wet ingredients in another bowl
• Add dry to wet gradually, stir to incorporated everything
• Stir in grated sweet potato 
• Bake for 45 to 60 minutes until golden brown 

A cream cheese frosting was used to cover the cake

• 8 oz cream cheese
• 2 T soften butter
• 3 -4 c of icing sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla

Mix ingredients well.  Frost the cake when cool. 

Since this was a birthday cake, I added mini bear cookies around the edge of the cake. This pleased my grandchild, as she ate only the frosting and the cookies.. then quietly asked me if I still was making her Barbie Doll Cake that I had been promising her for her party.  

This last picture is the funniest as her little sister who is 18 months, really wanted to be included in the photo!