Species 005: Sweet Potato Snacking Cake with Torched Meringue and Caramelized Pecans
For me, Thanksgiving has always been the ultimate holiday—something I look forward to over the crowd-pleasing Christmas, the amusing Halloween, and the charming Easter. To be fair, I was not brought up religious, and we celebrated most of these Christian holidays for an excuse to bring together the twenty-two members of my extended family living in the same town.
I favor Thanksgiving because it’s a holiday focused on not only giving thanks, but food, family, and good conversation. The whole point is to get together with your loved ones in front of an incredible feast and talk about your lives. For me, a holiday needs no other allure than this.
What always struck me as interesting about Thanksgiving is that, on their own, each dish is easy and rather reasonable to make at any time of the year—but we never do. Perhaps the occasion enshrouds each dish with a magical quality that seems inappropriate for the daily meal. Still, I wanted to create a treat that would remind me of the joyous holiday, if not impinging on its singularity. Instead of simply recreating one of the many desserts my sister and I prepare for the post-dinner sugar spree, I decided to take the spirit of one of my favorite Thanksgiving dishes—the sweet potato casserole—and turn it into an everyday dessert.
Species 005: This tender, flavorful sweet potato cake topped with a fluffy, torched meringue frosting and caramelized pecans is the dessert equivalent of my family’s yearly Thanksgiving sweet potato casserole.
Primary Traits
Our family’s sweet potato casserole is fairly traditional. Each year, I see recipes for modern, new-age sweet potato dishes, but I just can’t give up the comfort of the slightly bizarre yet time-tested sweet potato, brown sugar, pecan, and broiled marshmallow combination. And luckily, it’s my sister and I who control the strings on that dish.
Every year, we prepare a dish comprised of mashed sweet potatoes (with brown sugar and butter), a pecan streusel, and a generous layer of mini marshmallows that are broiled until golden-brown. If you haven’t tried marshmallow topped sweet potatoes, put on your adventure pants and give it a shot. You might feel strange cracking open a bag of mini marshmallows to top your mashed sweet potatoes, but the combination of the crisped, sweet marshmallows and the creamy, smooth sweet potatoes is a match made in heaven.
For my dessert adaptation, I decided to create a fairly literal translation of the sweet potato casserole in dessert form. Just as the casserole is straightforward and comfortingly unsurprising, so too would be the dessert.
Don’t feel guilty, sometimes you have to get down to business…
Trait #1: Sweet Potato Snacking Cake
A sweet potato cake—soft, moist, and subtly spiced—would be the perfect analog for the mashed sweet potato base of the dish. I started with the Epicurious Sweet Potato Layer Cake recipe and made some simple mutations to decrease the complexity of the spice mix. Again, straightforward and comfortingly unsurprising was the goal in this recipe. I also swapped out dark brown sugar for light, to deepen the molasses flavor of the cake and make up for the toned down spices.
I decided, instead of making a layer cake, which inherently conveys a sense of occasion, to make what I like to call a snacking cake—a single layer cake that is down-to-earth enough to eat daily, for absolutely no reason, without feeling too extravagant. I wanted the bulk of the bite to be the sweet potato cake, so I decided to cut the Epicurious recipe, which makes two 9-inch layers, in half and bake it in an 8-inch pan, for a thicker slice of single layer cake.
Trait #2: Torched Meringue Frosting
For the marshmallow component, I first considered finding a way to give a literal nod to the casserole’s mini marshmallow topping. The issue with marshmallows is that, once toasted, they must be eaten hot or the marshmallows will cool into a tough, sticky mess. This is no issue with the casserole because it is always eaten straight from the oven, but with a snacking cake, I wanted the marshmallow component to stay at the ready, soft and crisp, for consumption at any time of day. Luckily, meringue and marshmallow are first-cousins, so I knew a meringue frosting would achieve the same marshmallow vibe, crisp up nicely under a torch, and maintain a soft, pillowy texture underneath. I used King Arthur Flour’s Seven Minute Frosting recipe almost exactly as is, not wanting to make a change for change’s sake. I decided to use vanilla bean seeds to achieve an especially pure vanilla flavor, but extract works just fine.
Trait #3: Caramelized Pecans
The final touch was a nod to the pecan streusel that we bake onto the casserole before topping it off with marshmallows. The streusel adds both texture and small bursts of brown sugar and toasted pecan flavor to punctuate the casserole. For the snacking cake, I decided to, instead of mixing nuts into the cake which would achieve a similar if more integrated result, top the cake with some slivered, toasted, caramelized pecans. I decided to caramelize them in dark brown sugar to pack a deeper flavor punch. They add a bit of crunch and help highlight the dark brown sugar in the snacking cake.
Resulting Species
The resulting snacking cake is an obvious analog to the quintessential Thanksgiving sweet potato casserole. The sweet potato cake is tender and flavorful without being complex. The meringue frosting is pillowy on the inside and crisp on the outside, and gives that unmistakable marshmallow finish. The caramelized pecans provide texture and highlight the brown sugar notes in the cake itself. You can enjoy this cake any time, any day, and you’ll hopefully walk away with the sense of comfort and contentment that a homemade Thanksgiving feast brings to the table. Enjoy!
Until next time,
The Culinary Darwinist
Sweet Potato Snacking Cake with Torched Meringue and Caramelized Pecans
Makes one 8-inch snacking cake
Ingredients
For the sweet potato cake
For the caramelized pecans
For the marshmallow frosting
Method
Make the caramelized pecans
- Add the dark brown sugar, water, vanilla, and cinnamon in a saucepan, and stir to combine. Heat on medium-high until the sugar has desolved and is starting to simmer (about 90 seconds).
- Immediately add the pecan halves, and stir to combine. Continue to cook the mixture until the liquid has mostly burned off (about 2-3 minutes). The pecans should be completely covered in the caramel, and there should just be a small amount of liquid caramel in excess.
- Dump the pecans on a parchment-lined baking sheet, and spread them out as much as possible—so they can dry individually. Let them cool completely before using.
Make the cake
- Preheat the oven to 350º. Grease and line an 8-inch cake pan.
- Sift together the cake flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and salt in a bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk to gether the oil, sugar, brown sugar, eggs, and sweet potato purée until well combined. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet with a spatula until fully combined.
- Pour into the prepared cake pan and bake for about 40-45 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely on a wire rack.
Make the frosting & assemble
- Combine all the ingredients in a bowl over a double boiler. Using a hand mixer, beat at high speed for about seven minutes, or until the frosting is glossy and thick. Depending on the heat, you may have to beat it for longer—you'll know it's done when the whisk leaves thick trails in the frosting.
- Load the frosting into a piping bag with a medium-sized star tip and cover the top of the cooled cake with a thin layer. Use an offset spatula to smooth out the top. Pipe small rosettes around the rim and larger rosettes on top, leaving large gaps between them. Fill the gaps in with the caramelized pecans. Serve at room temp. The frosting doesn't save beautifully, so try to eat within the next 1-2 days. ∎
This is a sneak peek article.
For the full suite of recipes, check back here in April.
