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Chocolate Potato Cake
3/4 cup shortening 2 cups sugar 4 egg yolks 1 cup hot mashed potato 2 cups pastry flour 3 teaspoons baking powder 2 teaspoons cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg 1/2 cup milk 2 oz. bitter chocolate 1 cup nut meats 4 egg whites Cream shortening and sugar, beat in egg yolks and the mashed potato. Then alternately add mixed and sifted dry ingredients with milk and melted chocolate. Stir in nut meats and fold in stiffly beaten egg whites. Bake in shallow pan in moderate 375 degrees oven about 30 minutes.
A rich spice-and-chocolate cake that uses mashed potato for moisture and a tender crumb. The method is straightforward creamed-cake work, with two points worth watching.
- The potato must be plainThe potato is best plain -- "hot mashed potato" in recipes of this kind normally means potato mashed without butter, milk or seasoning. Boil and mash or rice a potato smooth (a medium one gives roughly a cup) and use it while still warm so it blends into the batter rather than sitting in lumps.
- Bitter chocolateTwo ounces of "bitter chocolate" is unsweetened baking chocolate, not bittersweet or semi-sweet. All the sweetness in the cake comes from the two cups of sugar.
- Pastry flourPastry flour is softer and lower in protein than all-purpose, sitting between all-purpose and cake flour. To approximate it, use a mixture of all-purpose and cake flour, or replace about 1 tablespoon per cup of all-purpose flour with cornstarch.
- Oven and pan375F is correct as written. "Shallow pan" means a sheet-style cake, and a 9x13-inch pan suits this quantity at roughly the 30 minutes given. A deeper pan -- tube or loaf -- will need noticeably longer than 30 minutes for the center to set.
- Folding the whitesFour whites beaten stiff are the only lift beyond the baking powder, and the batter is heavy. Fold in a third of the whites first to slacken it, then the rest, and stop while a few streaks remain.
- Nut meatsOne cup of nuts, chopped -- walnuts or pecans suit the spices. Toasting them first improves the flavor considerably and keeps them from going soft in the wet batter.
- Yield and finishingA 9x13 pan gives about 15 squares. The recipe stops at the baking; a boiled or fudge frosting would suit it, and it is also good plain with a dusting of confectioners' sugar.
Potato cakes and potato breads belong to a long tradition of stretching wheat flour with something cheaper and more plentiful, and mashed potato earned a place in American baking because it does the job well: its starch holds water, so the crumb stays moist for days. Chocolate potato cake appears in church-supper and community cookbooks in the first half of the twentieth century, often spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg as here, and wartime and Depression-era campaigns urging cooks to substitute potato for part of the flour may have helped keep it in circulation. With two cups of sugar, four eggs, unsweetened chocolate and a cup of nuts, this version is squarely a party cake rather than an economy measure.