A sweet potato cake recipe that's challenging Red Velvet (2024)

"The Brown Betty Cookbook" by Linda Hinton Brown and Norrinda Brown Hayatt

In at least one Philadelpha bakery, sweet potato cake has been quietly displacing the now ubiquitous Red Velvet Cake as the top seller.

The super moist cake made from “baked sweets” has even become a popular wedding cake choice among customers of the Brown Betty Dessert Boutique. It's also one of the four sweet potato-based recipes in “The Brown Betty Cookbook” (Wiley, $22.99), just published by the bakery's mother-daughter owners, Linda Hinton Brown and Norrinda Brown Hayat.

The cookbook features recipes developed mostly by Hinton Brown for the bakery named after her mother, Elizabeth “Betty” Hinton, an old-school homemaker who cooked Sunday dinner right after church, baked “mile-high” cakes, and entertained family and friends with ease.

Among Southerners, sweet potatoes are baked and blended into pies; grated and flavored with molasses, spices and citrus to make sweet potato pone, a custardy solid pudding; or “candied” with a buttery, caramelized sugar-cinnamon glaze, sometimes with apples or pineapples thrown in.

In the Brown Betty Cookbook, sweet potato recipes include the cake (recipe below); a rich pie made with butter, cream cheese and heavy cream; a tall sweet potato cheesecake finished with sour cream topping; and a baked sweet potato pudding -- also with cream cheese -- that could be a pie alternative, sparing the calories of a crust.

Brown Hyat initially questioned the idea of a sweet potato cake for the bakery. "In fact, I stood in silent opposition to its creation for fear we had too much sweet potato on the menu already,” she writes in the book.

Laura NovakBrown Betty Dessert Boutique founders Norrinda Brown Hayat (left) and Linda Hinton Brown (right) with Elizabeth "Betty" Hinton (center), the grandmother and mother who inspired the eponymous bakery and cookbook.

But in addition to its popularity, the cake and other sweet potato sweets have had an unexpected bridge-building effect, she says. Few people were familiar with sweet potato desserts in the multicultural Northern Liberties neighborhood where they opened their first bakery. “Everyone came in asking for pumpkin,” Brown Hayatt said in a recent interview. “Now we have so many sweet potato converts.” They've also created some pumpkin items: a pie and a white-grape-juice-sweetened pumpkin cake.

“We've exposed ourselves [to pumpkin recipes], and others have been exposed to some of the recipes that we were more familiar with growing up,” Brown Hayat says. “Before we opened the bakery, we had no idea how few people baked with sweet potatoes.”

Sweet potatoes also have gained attention as a "super food" because it is a rich source of vitamin A as well as vitamins B6, C and E, and of dietary fiber and several minerals.

Kathleen King, who also includes a sweet potato cake in her latest cookbook, "Baking for Friends," says she enjoys plain, roasted sweet potatoes as an energizing snack, sometimes blended with almond butter.

"In the fall, I love using pumpkin and sweet potatoes to bake," says the founder of Tate's Bake Shop in South Hampton, New York. "Anything you can make with pumpkin, you can make with sweet potato," says King. "You can make sweet potato muffins, scones, pies and cakes. My favorite sweet potatoes for baking are the Japanese purple-skinned sweet potatoes (Satsuma-imo)."

"Sweet potatoes are heartier and sweeter than pumpkin, therefore giving your finished baked good and richer flavor," she says. "Think sweet potato pie versus pumpkin pie -- similar in taste, but the [sweet potato] texture is more hearty."

Brown Hayat observes: "Sweet potatoes have more flavor to work with, so you have to do less in adding the spices. Pumpkin comes out a little thinner, where sweet potato is a bit more more robust."

King says she hasn't offered sweet potato cakes to her well-heeled Hamptons customers, however. "I don't like canned sweet potatoes, and the time it takes to bake all the potatoes and mash them doesn't fit into our production at this time," she explained.

Brown Betty's two bakery locations use only fresh sweet potatoes, and the cookbook reveals the labor involved to remove the stringy pulp that sometimes comes with sweet-potato baking. Home cooks are advised to use a mixer's paddle attachment to whip the flesh of skinned roasted potatoes for 30 seconds. "Discard all the pulp that will have gathered on your paddle. Repeat this step and then move on to making your batter." The cookbook also suggests forcing the finished batter through a mesh sieve to remove any remaining pulp or lumps. (For less 'stringy' potatoes, pick them smaller and more rounded).

One of the earliest recipes for sweet potato cake appeared in the November 1996 issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine. It has macadamia nuts mixed in and white chocolate frosting. At Epicurious.com, there's a highly rated version from the November 2000 issue of Bon Appetit. More recently, there's a sweet potato and cream cheese pound cake recipe from the November 2011 issue of Southern Living magazine. The Food Network and popular recipe sites also have versions.

Online reviews often compare sweet potato cake to a very moist spice cake. Many leave off the frosting or use a simple icing. The most popular recipes use roasted potatoes, but in a few instances, the potatoes are grated into something that more closely resembles carrot cake.

Beyond sweet potato cake, the Brown Betty Dessert Boutiques offer numerous other beautifully frosted cakes named after women in the authors' extended family. Pies, cobblers, puddings and cookies also are offered, and many of them are among the cookbook's recipes. Most of the cake recipes are paired with a story about the woman who inspired it.

"Our concept was to pay tribute both to the baking history that we had grown up with, and to stories, Brown Hayat says. "Story telling and the kitchen, those things are connected very naturally."

Featured recipe

Alison ConklinSweet potato cake frosted with spiced vanilla buttercream Brown Betty Dessert Boutique is featured in "The Brown Betty Cookbook."

Brown Betty's sweet potato cake with spiced vanilla buttercream

Nonstick cooking spray with flour

1-1/2 pounds sweet potatoes, scrubbed

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

4 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

1-1/8 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon ground ginger

3 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature

2 cups granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

8 large eggs

1-1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1 cup evaporated milk

Spiced vanilla buttercream (recipe follows)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Coat three 9-inch round cake pans with nonstick cooking spray and line a rimmed baking sheet with foil.

2. Place the potatoes on the baking sheet and rub the skins with oil. Roast the potatoes until tender when pierced with a fork, 50 to 55 minutes. Set the potatoes aside until they are cool enough to handle. Using a knife, remove the skin of the sweet potatoes and place the flesh of the potatoes in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat the potato flesh on medium-high speed to remove pulp, about 1 minute. Push the flesh through a fine-mesh strainer over a medium bowl. Set aside.

3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger.

4. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy, scraping the bowl as necessary, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, beating until blended. Add the strained sweet potatoes and vanilla and beat until blended.

5. Reduce the mixer speed to low and alternately add the flour mixture and evaporated milk to the sweet potato mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture and beating until smooth.

6. Divide the batter equally among the prepared pans and bake until a wooden pick inserted into the center comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Let the cakes cool in the pans for 10 minutes before turning them out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

7. To assemble and frost the cakes, place 1 cake layer, bottom-side up, on a cake plate. Use an offset spatula to spread 1 cup of the buttercream on top. Add the second cake layer, bottom-side down, and spread 1 cup of the buttercream on top. Top with the third cake layer, bottom-side up. Frost the top and sides of the cake with the remaining buttercream.

Spiced vanilla buttercream
Makes 4 cups

6 ounces Philadelphia® cream cheese, at room temperature

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature

Pinch of salt

14 ounces (13/4 cups) confectioners’ sugar

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the cream cheese and vanilla together on medium speed until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the butter and salt and beat until blended, scraping the bowl as necessary.

2. Reduce the mixer speed to low and gradually add the confectioner's sugar, beating until blended. Scrape the bowl and add the cinnamon. Increase the mixer speed to high and beat until light and fluffy, about 1 minute. Set aside until ready to use.