Spiced Sweet Potato Cake With a Deliciously Healthy Cream Cheese Frosting

This week I had a go at baking a healthier version of a vegetable cake. Sweet potato may seem like an odd choice, but it works just as well as carrot to make cakes beautifully moist. Thanks to the Hemsley sisters for inspiration – their latest book has a fantastic carrot cake recipe, which I’ve loosely based this recipe on. The cake is refined sugar, gluten and dairy-free, and tastes amazing!

 This recipe makes one small cake, about 9cm in diameter. If you want to make a whole cake, triple the ingredients – this will fill a 20cm cake tin. The topping is light and creamy, and reminds me of cream cheese frosting. It's high in protein, very low in fat, and has no refined sugars. The perfect frosting :)

The cake will keep for about a week in an airtight container.

Makes one 9cm cake (serves 2)

Ingredients:

For the cake:

• 80g (1/2 cup) ground almonds
• ½ tbsp coconut oil, melted
• Pinch of salt
• ¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• ½ tbsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp mixed spice
• 1 egg
• 1 tbsp agave syrup
• 100g (1/2 cup) peeled and grated sweet potato 
• 50g (1/4 cup) raisins or sultanas 

For the topping:

• 125g (1/2 cup and 1 1/2 tbsp) quark
• 1 tbsp vanilla protein powder (I use Myprotein Whey)
• 1 tsp agave syrup
• 2-3 tsp freshly squeezed orange juice
• ½ tsp ground cinnamon

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180c/ 355f/ gas mark 4. Grease the base and sides of the 9cm cake tin (or use a chef’s ring on a baking tray).

2. Pour all of the cake ingredients into a medium sized mixing bowl, and beat until all of the ground almonds have been incorporated into the mixture, and the sweet potato and raisins/sultanas are evenly spread through the batter.

3. Place the batter into the cake tin. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until the top has browned, and is firm to the touch. Leave to cool.

4. Make the frosting. In a medium mixing bowl beat together the quark, protein powder, cinnamon and agave syrup. Add a small amount of the orange juice and beat again – you want the frosting to be spreadable but not drip down the cake. If it's too stiff, add more orange juice. If it becomes too loose, add a little more protein powder.

5. Once the cake has cooled, spread over the frosting.

6. Enjoy!