The recipe for this sweet potato cake was adapted from one a kind friend on instagram sent me. Kate moore @thebakingdirectory made a beautiful sweet potato cake and I commented how wonderful it looked and how I had never tried one and she kindly sent me her recipe. I adapted it and used cinnamon instead of ginger and orange instead of lime as I wanted to put my own spin on it. I had some pomagrante so i decided to use it to flavour the frosting. to do this i squeezed the juice out of the seeds by placing them in a mesh jelly bag and squeezing the juice into a bowl (I find it gets very messy so don’t wear your favourite cream top like I did lol)

It’s times like this when two people who have never met but get to feel like friends makes me love being part of instagram. I only joined it this year and I’m so glad I did.

The roses where from my garden. My grandma got me a rose plant as a gift and it has had quite a few flowers this year. I love how one rose plant can produce three roses and they are all a slightly different colour. She came around with another potted rose recently but it got knocked over and broke in half  (I have a patio style garden where I keep my plants and herbs by the back door so i dont forget to water them as if I put them in the ground up the garden I would forget about them and probably kill them lol)

Recipe

• 250g Caster Sugar
• 3 Eggs
• 225ml Olive Oil
• Zest of 1 orange
• 265g Plain Flour
• 1 tsp Baking Powder
• 1/2 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
• 1 tsp Ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp Salt
• 250g Sweet Potato
• 5 tbsp chopped pistachios
• 1 tbsp orange blossom water

Frosting

• 300ml double cream
• 5 tbsp pomegranate juice
• 5 tbsp Icing Sugar
• 3 tbsp Honey

1. Preheat the oven to 180° and grease and line 2 20cm/8” tins or three 11 cm sandwich tins (I used these to make these thin layers rather than two decent sized ones)

2. Boil the sweet potato until completely cooked, then leave to cool before scooping out all of the flesh and passing through a ricer.

3. Beat the sugar and eggs until silky and airy then slowly add the olive oil, blossom and zest, beating until smooth

4. Fold in the flour, baking powder, bicarb, cinnamon and salt and nuts before finally adding the sweet potato and giving a good mix

5. Pour into the lined tins and bake for 20-30 mins, checking after 20, until a skewer comes out clean. Turn out onto a wire rack and leave to cool

6. Meanwhile, to make the frosting. First mix the cream and icing sugar the add the honey and pomegranate juice and mix until peaks form.

Pipe into the cake then add some pomegranate seeds and add the next layer of sponge and then do the same again. Decorate with pomegranate seeds, pistachios and roses and orange slices.