Cocoa Potato Cakes 1
by Sarah Metz
(Sodus, Michigan)
Individual cakes that look like potatoes!
I had some free time one day and decided to try out a recipe that had been lying around the house.
The cake batter (vanilla egg-white-based) is squeezed out in ovals on a cookie sheet and baked, then cooled. For each "potato", two oval cakes are held together with raspberry jam, then wrapped in almond paste (finely ground almonds, powdered sugar, and water). After shaping the almond paste to look like a lumpy potato, each cake is rolled in cocoa powder. The potato "eyes" are made by poking little pieces of slivered blanched almonds into the paste.
I gave a couple of these cakes to my cousin for her eighteenth birthday, and I took a few to my class at college (a culinary class). Not only were my fellow culinary students impressed, but the chef instructor was too! I even got an immediate marriage proposal out of one of the guys! I plan to enter a few of these cakes in the county fair this year.
These cakes can take a lot of time and patience to make, especially if you're one to "mess up" a few times before pulling through (like me), but the results are worth it!
