Chocolate Potato Cake (1918)
Reader ratingsChocolate potato cake from Carolyn Putnam Webber’s war-time recipes of 1918: a loaf made with oleomargarine, mashed potato and barley flour, half sweetened with corn syrup.
- Recipe makes
- One 8½ by 4½-inch loaf, 10 slices
- Prep
- Cook
- Total
Boil and mash the potato first and let it cool, about 35 minutes in all. The cake bakes for about 55 minutes and cools for 30 before slicing.
Chocolate potato cake, sliced, with hard sauce.
The story behind the recipe
Mashed potato in a chocolate cake was a way to make a little flour go further, and in 1918 Carolyn Putnam Webber added barley flour, corn syrup and oleomargarine to spare wheat, sugar and butter at once. She taught cookery in Bedford, Massachusetts, and printed the cake in her Two Hundred and Seventy-Five War-Time Recipes.
Why put mashed potato in a chocolate cake?
Her recipe is ten ingredients and two short sentences, with no method at all: the chocolate can be left out, and the cake can go “as loaf or in muffin tins.” Under it she prints three numbered notes on saving wheat flour, sugar and fats in cakes: a cup of mashed potato stands in for half a cup of flour and half a cup of milk; barley, rice, oat or potato flour should replace at least thirty to fifty percent of white flour; half a cup of sugar and half of corn syrup take the place of a cup of sugar. The oleomargarine needed no note.
Inside a chocolate cake, nobody could see whether the fat had been white or yellow.
Read more about this recipe
Making it today
We supplied the method, oven and times, and read her plain “2 oz chocolate” as unsweetened. Barley flour is sold in many supermarkets and health food shops; it has less gluten than wheat flour. Stir it in only until no dry flour shows. Use plain potato, mashed with nothing added, and let it cool so it doesn’t warm the batter. We bake it as a loaf, the first of her two choices.
Why Did Butter Make Margarine Expensive? follows the margarine tax from a Supreme Court case to the war cookbooks. A spoonful of the Hard Sauce (1918) on a warm slice saves butter twice over.
¼ c oleomargarine ...
Recipe makes: One 8½ by 4½-inch loaf, 10 slices
Ingredients
For One 8½ by 4½-inch loaf, 10 slices. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for One 8½ by 4½-inch loaf, 10 slices.
- Plain mashed potato, cooled (about 1 medium russet)1 cup
- Unsweetened baking chocolate, chopped2 oz
- Stick margarine, softened1/4 cup
- Sugar1/2 cup
- Light corn syrup1/2 cup
- Large eggs2
- Vanilla extract1 tsp
- Barley flour1 1/8 cups
- Baking powder1 tbsp
- Salt1/2 tsp
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- 1 cup plain mashed potato, cooled (about 1 medium russet)
- 2 oz unsweetened baking chocolate, chopped
- ¼ cup stick margarine, softened
- ½ cup sugar
- ½ cup light corn syrup
- 2 large eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1⅛ cups barley flour
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
Equipment
- Small saucepan for the potato
- Potato masher or ricer
- Small heatproof bowl for melting chocolate
- Large bowl and electric mixer or wooden spoon
- Loaf pan, 8½ by 4½ inches
- Toothpick or thin skewer
Instructions
Peel the potato, cut it in chunks, cover with cold water in the saucepan and boil for 15 to 20 minutes, until very tender. Drain well, mash until smooth with nothing added, measure out the amount listed, lightly packed, and let it cool to room temperature.
Heat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Grease the loaf pan and line the bottom with a strip of baking parchment.
Melt the chocolate in the small bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water, or in short bursts in the microwave, stirring until smooth. Let it cool a little.
In the large bowl, beat the stick margarine with the sugar until light, about 2 minutes. Beat in the corn syrup, then the eggs one at a time, then the vanilla, the melted chocolate and the mashed potato, until evenly brown.
Mix the barley flour, baking powder and salt in another bowl. Stir them into the batter just until no dry flour shows.
Scrape the batter into the pan and smooth the top. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, until the top springs back when pressed and a toothpick in the center comes out with no wet batter. If the top darkens before the center is done, cover it loosely with foil.
Cool in the pan for 10 minutes, turn out onto a rack and let cool for at least 20 minutes more before slicing.
Nutrition
235calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- One 8½ by 4½-inch loaf, 10 slices
- Servings
- 10
Estimated per slice from USDA FoodData Central values for the listed ingredients.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
The recipe needs 1 cup of plain mashed potato; one medium russet gives about that. Double it for two loaves.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the servings.
For muffins, divide the batter among 12 greased muffin cups and bake for 20 to 25 minutes. To leave out the chocolate, as Webber allows, skip the melting step. It keeps, wrapped, for 3 days at room temperature. Contains egg and barley (gluten); many margarines contain milk.
Scaling changes the ingredients only; pan sizes and cooking times need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.
Sources and attribution
After Carolyn Putnam Webber, Two Hundred and Seventy-Five War-Time Recipes (Bedford, Massachusetts, 1918), Chocolate Cake
Recipe details
- Course
- Dessert
- Dish family
- Breads & Cakes
- Region
- American
- Source decade
- 1910s
- Main ingredient
- Chocolate
- Difficulty
- Intermediate
- Occasion
- Everyday meal