White Chocolate Sweet Potato Pecan Topped Cakes, #TheCakeSliceBakers

The Cake Slice Bakers are a group of bakers from around the world. Every month a new challenge arrives...Currently, we are presented with the opportunity to bake one of four preselected from Southern Living’s The Southern Cake Book.

This Ninja Baker’s winning choice? White Chocolate Sweet Potato Pecan Topped Cakes (adapted from the Rum Glazed Sweet Potato Cakes recipe.)

Little girls are made of, “Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice.” (According to a popular 19th century poem.) And so is my rendition of Southern Living’s sweet potato cakes. The White Chocolate Sweet Potato Pecan Topped Cakes I’ve made contain American sweet potatoes aka yams. (The ones with orange flesh typically served at Thanksgiving with dollops of melted marshmallows.)

White chocolate and sweet potatoes are a perfect match.
The pecans are a bonus crunch!

The American yam has many fine merits. But the purple skinned Japanese Satsuma-imo sweet potato is my favorite. One American potato connoisseur deemed the Japanese Satsuma-imo as “too sweet.” But that just supports my case: The Japanese potato is the sweetest, “bestest” one! Tee hee. Anyway, I digress.

In mini cake or bundt form, the flavors of sweet potatoes,
white chocolate chips and pecans together are fantabulous!

The Southern Cake Book serves up a mighty recipe for sweet potato cakes. The cake is like a Southern belle: A slightly sugary drawl delivered with a subtle kick of spice. The cookbook also infused their mini sweet potato cakes recipe with rum. As I wanted children to enjoy this cake, the alcohol was omitted. Instead white chocolate chips were sprinkled in and melted to coat my mini bundts and cupcakes. To provide a crunch to the soft tender crumb, I garnished the cakes with pecans. (Both whole pecans and ground up pecans are delicious picks.)

More good news: White Chocolate Sweet Potato Pecan Topped Cakes are easy to make!

Ninja Note: The original recipe calls for pureed roasted sweet potatoes. As I didn’t see such a product in my local market, I simply pulsed canned sweet potatoes in my food processor until they were perfectly pureed. And they worked perfectly!

White Chocolate Sweet Potato Pecan Topped Cakes

Southern Comfort: Sweet potatoes, cake and white chocolate meet in one mighty mini bundt. Pecans interject a yummy crunch to a marriage of moist cake and white chocolate coating.

Adapted from Southern Living’s The Southern Cake Book

Yields 24 mini bundts and approximately 24 mini muffin-sized cakes

Ingredients:

4 large room-temperature eggs
2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups pureed sweet potatoes
3 cups all-purpose flour
1½ teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of sea salt
½ teaspoon nutmeg
¾ cup buttermilk
1 cup white chocolate chips (for cake)
12 ounces of white chocolate chips (for ganache cake coating)
½ cup heavy cream

Directions:

Prep:
Spray mini bundt pans with lots and lots of baking spray. Place mini cupcake cases into mini muffin tins.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Whip together the eggs and sugar for 3 to 5 minutes in a kitchen stand mixer. (Aim for a pale lemon color.) Reduce the speed and add the oil and vanilla. Beat in the sweet potato puree.

In a separate bowl: Sift the flour, spices, salt, baking powder and soda.

Add one-third of the dry ingredients to the sweet potato, egg and sugar bowl. Combine well. Pour in half of the buttermilk. Add another third of the flour mixture. Pour in the remaining buttermilk. Dump the remaining flour mixture into the bowl of the mixer and beat. Stir in the one cup of white chocolate chips.

Divide the batter among the mini bundt pans and mini cupcake cases. Bake for 16 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the centers is clean.

Cool for 5 to 10 minutes before removing from the tins. (Gently running a frosting spatula around the edges helps to easily release the mini bundts from the pans.)

For the ganache: Heat the heavy cream over low to medium heat. When little bubbles emerge, pour the hot cream over the white chocolate chips. Vigorously stir until all the chocolate dissolves. Allow the ganache to stand for 5 minutes or more.

Dunk the mini sweet potato cakes into the ganache. Garnish with pecans.

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Wishing you sugar, spice and everything nice!

The Ninja Baker

The Ninja Baker has guest blogged and contributed recipes to numerous food sites. These additional recipes can be found here.

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