Sweet potato chiffon cake

After seeing some pretty pictures of some purple sweet potato chiffon cake, I decided to give it a go. I couldn't find any purple sweet potato in the UK though so I just settled with some orange sweet potato. How boring and standard looking. Hmm, I wonder if beetroot would work in a chiffon cake?

I modified the earl grey chiffon cake recipe. Not by much though. Techniques are exactly the same so I suppose once you find a good chiffon cake recipe, all you have to do is substitute the ingredients and play around with them.

It's so cool how you invert the tin the second it comes out of the oven so that the texture remains light and spongy. I have to admit, I was really sceptical about it the first time I read the instructions. Do be careful as if the cake isn't cooked through, the whole cake topples out of the tin when inverted.

I did cut down on the sugar slightly. Just nice for my liking. Shame the sweet potato flavour wasn't too prominent. Maybe it'll stand out more if it were the purple sweet potato. Next of my list for chiffon cake flavours - apple or pear or maybe both.

Sweet potato chiffon cake
makes one 7 inch diameter cake

A
3 egg yolks
20g brown sugar

50ml vegetable oil
100g sweet potato (boiled and mashed with 5 Tbsp of milk)
zest of 1 lemon

1/2 tsp baking powder
100g flour
1/2 tsp salt

B
3 egg whites
40g caster sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar

1. Peel and cut sweet potato into chunks. Boil until cooked and mash with milk. Leave to cool.
2. Sieve flour, baking powder and salt together, set aside.
3. Separate egg yolks/whites.
4. Mix together egg yolks, oil, brown sugar and lemon zest.
5. Whisk the flour mixture and oil/egg yolk mixture until fully incorporated. Add in sweet potato and mix well.

6. In a clean, dry mixing bowl, beat egg whites, cream of tartar and sugar with an electric mixer stiff peaks form.
7. Add the beaten egg white into the egg yolk batter in 3 separate additions, each time folding gently with a spatula until just blended.

8. Pour batter into a 7 inch tube pan (do not grease the pan). Tap the pan lightly on a table top to get rid of any trapped air bubbles in the batter. 8. Bake in preheated oven at 170 C for 45 minutes or until the cake surface turns golden brown, and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

9. Remove from the oven and invert the pan immediately. Let cool completely before unmold. To remove the cake from the pan, run a thin-bladed knife around the inside of the pan and the centre core. Release the cake and run the knife along the base of the pan to remove the cake.