Orange Flavoured Potato Cake

Like half of the rest of the country, we’ve been baking a lot during lockdown and trying out new recipes. I’ve always wanted to try out using mashed potato in gluten free baking, so I experimented by mixing and matching various different cake recipes to create a gluten free sheet cake flavoured with zesty orange. You can’t taste the potato flavour at all, and it gives the cake a nice moist and fluffy texture.

Ingredients

• 450g potatoes
• 4 eggs
• a pinch of salt
• 100g light brown soft sugar
• 100g melted butter
• zest and juice of 1 orange
• 100g plain flour*
• 1 tsp baking powder*
• 100g ground almonds
• icing sugar and whipped cream to serve (optional)

* I use gluten free flour and baking powder, but regular is fine too.

Directions

• Peel, chop and boil the potatoes until tender. You should have approx. 400g of potato after peeling them. Finely mash the potatoes and set aside to cool.
• Pre-heat the over to 180 C for a regular oven or 160 C for a fan oven.
• Whisk the eggs, salt and sugar together in a bowl until light and creamy. Then mix in the mashed potato, melted butter and orange juice until well combined.
• In a separate bowl, sift the flour and baking powder, then mix in the almonds and orange zest until well combined.
• Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and again mix until well combined.
• Grease an oven proof dish or deep baking tray (ours is approx. 25cm x 34cm), pour in the cake batter and spread it out evenly.
• Bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes until it starts to golden on top and an inserted knife comes out clean.
• Leave the cake to cool and one cooled optionally dust with icing sugar before serving.

Note: This cake comes out quite flat, it’s only a few cm thick, but it’s meant to be like that. It’s still very light and fluffy, with a lovely citrus flavour. It tastes great with whipped cream on the side.