May I present possibly the best sweet potato chocolate cake ever?
Yep, I knew you’d be interested, so here we go: perfectly chocolatey, moist, vegan and gluten free sweet potato cake with lightly salted popcorn and thick, sticky and sweet date caramel frosting… Divine!
The cake is easy to make, deeply chocolatey and the texture is moist, fluffy and nice, but still easy to cut. I made this cake using teff flour, which I hadn’t used before in sweet baking. If you are familiar with teff, then you also know that the taste is special, a bit sour you might even say.
The taste of the cake is special too, and us grown-ups in the test group just loved, loved it, but the younger ones, my sister’s children, didn’t like the cake that much – they thought it was a bit too special. But it was totally ok, ’cause it meant more cake for the rest of us, ha. (And I have to mention that my sister had four pieces herself, since of course she had to finish the pieces her girls didn’t eat…)
The cake might divide opinions, but us adults really loved it, maybe even too much – the cake was almost addictive (I’m craving it so badly at this moment when looking at the pictures…!).
If you want to be more than sure that everyone will love the cake, you can of course substitute a milder gluten free flour for the teff. But I will use teff also in the future and try it out in other sweet baking as well – the combination was so good. The texture of the cake is moist but fluffy, but still the cake is very easy to cut and it holds together well – sweet potato makes for a great substitute for eggs!
This gluten free, vegan sweet potato chocolate cake also has a lovely frosting: oat cream “cheese” (I used Oatly’s “Påmackan” that we have here in Finland) and date-coconut caramel blended nicely together. Sweet. By the way, when I was younger I used to work in a coffee house, where we had this perfect chocolate cake I couldn’t resist. And now, almost a decade later, I had very similar cake on my plate, even to my own surprise. Only, this time without gluten, dairy products or refined sugar – not bad!
Oh and the popcorn! For a long time now I’ve been craving to combine lightly salted popcorn with sweet baking. This cake has some ground popcorn kernels inside, and it will be decorated with them too. Easy, tasty and oh so pretty too!
Hope you’re having a sweet day as well,
Tuulia xx
Sweet Potato Chocolate Cake with Popcorn (gluten free, vegan)
prepared in a 20 cm cake mold (with a removable bottom)
wet ingredients:
2 dl sweet potato puree
2,25 dl plant based milk
0,75 dl maple syrup
0,5 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
dry ingredients:
2,5 dl teff flour
2 Tsp psyllium
0,75 dl coconut sugar
1 tl vanilla powder
hint of salt
2 dl crushed, lightly salted popcorn
1 dl dark, unsweetened cocoa powder
1,5 Tsp baking soda
virgin coconut oil
date caramel:
0,5 dl coconut milk
8 soft medjool dates (pitted)
1 Tbsp tahini
frosting:
2 packets of (Oatly) oat cream cheese (Påmackan)
2 tbsp lucuma powder
1 tsp raw cocoa powder
1 tbsp maple syrup
For decoration: lightly salted popcorns, maple syrup
1. Heat the oven to 175 degrees. Cover the cake mold with parchment paper and oil it lightly. Prepare the sweet potato puree and popcorn (in coconut oil).
2. Let the sweet potato soup cool down and mix the wet ingredients together.
3. Mix the dry ingredients together well, and then add them to the wet ingredients: mix well.
4. Scoop the dough into the cake mold and bake for about 30 minutes, or until the cake is done.
5. While the cake is in the oven, prepare the frosting: blend the coconut milk, tahini and medjool dates together and mix until you have sweet and creamy date caramel. Mix with the oat cream cheese along with lucuma, raw chocolate powder and maple syrup.
6. When the cake is baked, let it cool down well. When ready, spread the lovely frosting on top of the cake, and decorate with popcorn and maple syrup.
7. Enjoy! ✨