The Kumara Cake

FREEEEEDOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!

Exams finished yesterday. For me. Ahaha. The others are still studying. I meanwhile donned an apron, poured myself a glass of particularly budget goon and baked a CAKE. Inspired by both Auntie M and Deb the lovely Canadian, I made a kumara and pecan cake. Or a 'sweet potato' and pecan cake for anyone outside of New Zealand. GLORIOUS. First cake didn't go too badly if I do say so myself.

Pretty. Although some serious lighting issues make the photos look a bit average turning the beautiful golden colour into a sort of murky brown. Disappointing. Such a shame there is almost NO natural light in my house. I will work on this. Maybe take a sledge hammer to the wall or something. The cake making was lots of fun. Bit of hard work involved peeling all those bits of roasted kumara. I think I've burnt my thumb. Worth it though. The recipe I used was taken directly off Deb's blog, Carousel, which is a very beautiful blog.

Ingredients:

Three hefty kumara

2 3/4 cups of flour

2 tsp cinnamon

1 1/4 tsp ginger

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup of oil

4 eggs

1 tsp vanilla. (Not going to lie, completely forgot about this in today's attempt)

First heat the oven to 150degrees (Celsius) and roast the kumara for about 40mins to an hour. I took this opportunity to do the dishes. Yeah!

Sift together the flour, cinnamon, ginger, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Then once the kumara feels soft in the middle, take them out and peel them. Then mash mash - you want about 2 cups of mashed kumara.

Then into the kumara mix the cup of oil and beat in the eggs one at a time, and add the vanilla.

Combine wet and dry and put into a greased bundt tin.

Bake for about an hour - until a skewer test is clean - at 170degrees.
Leave to settle for 15 minutes or so before icing. 

For the icing: (this is going to make my Mum pull a face; its rather obscene)
110g unsalted butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup cream
1/4 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup roughly chopped pecans
1 cup icing sugar


Melt the butter in a saucepan with the sugar and cream. When the butter is melted, bring to the boil for 3 minutes stirring occasionally. Add the vanilla and pecans; then add the icing sugar. Pour over cake. Holy moly this shit is delicious and smells amazing. Spoon licking encouraged. Leave the iced cake to sit for an hour or so for the icing to set.

Oh lord, look at that pool of creamy buttery pecany mess in the middle there. Drool. It really was very very delicious.It went down a treat with the willing taste testers.
Even if one of them did rudely stick his finger in it....

Nothing to do all week. Such is the life of a lady of luxury. Will plot cake related plots. Tidy the pit that is my bedroom. Prance around drinking goon. It will be fabulous. May make a kitchen playlist too. Today I put my itunes on shuffle and it kept churning out horrors. Tenacious D? Really Niki? And a series of intense electronic stuff I was obsessed with in 2007. Not kitchen appropriate.

Hope my cake ladies are well. x