I'm a glaze hater. It reads weird but I really do hate glaze. Every time I come across those moist bundt cakes flaunting their aesthetic curves, I reach out for a piece without a shred of self-control. But the glaze! That almost always dampens (pun intended) my gastronimcal experience. The ugly drips (Sorry, glaze lovers. I don't find them one bit pretty.) on the otherwise glossy, moist bundt cakes put me off. So I decided to do a straightforward no-drips-attached bundt cake with all the richness sans the sugary bits.
This was simple because I had all the ingredients on hand. I adapted the recipe from this site. And it's a pretty good site. I fell in love with the idea because it had a not-so-secret ingredient in it - sweet potato. The sweet potato, you see, has the richness akin to heavy cream. In fact, there are a lot of places where this orange sweet meat could act as an awesome substitute for heavy cream. And they are bursting with beta-carotene, anti oxidants and anti inflammatory properties. And what's more, those nutritional properties can be better extracted if it's consumed in a medium of fat (think butter, oil). So I suppose the 2 cups of sugar that comes along with it is kind of pardonable in grand scheme of things.
Ok, now over to the recipe.
Ingredients
1 stick butter (feel free to play around with substitutes.But take it from me, a bit of butter can better our mundane lives.).
1/2 cup coconut oil
2 cups sugar (I used coconut sugar. But you lovelies could use anything from brown sugar (too caramely), honey (bring down the oil/butter proportionately) or blackstrap molasses (I ran out of this. I so want this in.)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 eggs or flax eggs*
3 cups flour of your choice (I used a unruly blend of quinoa, spelt and all-purpose flours)
2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon all-spice
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
a pinch of salt
and the hero *drum roll please* 2 cups of cooked and mashed sweet potato
Method
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Cream butter and coconut oil with sugar in a stand mixer or whatever works the best for you. Add in vanilla extract. Add eggs one by one or if using flax eggs*, in four installments, beating every time before adding in.) In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, all spice, nutmeg and salt. Add the flour mixture to the butter, alternating with sweet potato and ending with flour. Mix until just combined and scoop the thick batter into a generously greased bundt pan.
Bake for 50-60 minutes. Transfer the cake to a cooling rack when it is cool enough to handle.
Sod the glaze! this is so moist, rich and unbelievably (ok, believable, given the fact that we had incorporated generous amounts of spice) flavorful.
Notes
* Flax eggs - you might be knowing by now that this is by far the best substitute for eggs (apart from Ener G, which is pretty versatile as well.). The substitute works like this - for every egg, you take one teaspoon of flax meal and beat it in two tablespoon of water. Rest the mixture for a few minutes until it turns gooey.
