Seriously, Add Mashed Potatoes To Your Chocolate Cake For A Big Upgrade

A beloved comfort food, chocolate cake has been around for more than a century. According to the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan, one of the first printed recipes came from Linda Hull Larned's 1899 cookbook "The Hostess Of To-Day." Just as bakers like her have adapted yellow cake recipes to include chocolate, they have experimented with chocolate cake recipes, using some rather unexpected ingredients like mashed potatoes. You read that right: There's a chocolate potato cake recipe.

One of the first published chocolate cake recipes to use potatoes can be found in "A New Book of Cookery" by Fannie Merritt Farmer. Initially published in 1912, the cookbook includes a recipe for Caramel Potato Cake, which is likely a typo because the recipe itself doesn't call for caramel. It does, however, call for grated chocolate and a chocolate square for the fudge frosting.

Farmer wasn't the only one to jot down a chocolate potato cake recipe, though. The staff at the Fort Walla Walla Museum in Washington State found a similar recipe using mashed potatoes in a 1912 journal belonging to Civil War veteran turned police officer, Franklin Boardman Morse. The museum explains that it was common for people to use potatoes in cakes because of butter and flour shortages during the war and the Great Depression. If you have the right ingredients, though, why would you add mashed potatoes to chocolate cake?

While chocolate and potato don't sound like they would go well together, you actually don't taste the flavor of the potatoes. According to Potatoes U.S.A., spuds offer several functional benefits to baked goods. The biggest advantage is that this root vegetable improves the texture, giving the bake a golden exterior and moist interior.

While being mixed, potatoes absorb water, which creates a creamy batter with sweet notes for cakes. Baked goods retain this additional moisture, which gives them a longer shelf life, too. Meanwhile, the browning on the outside that occurs while baking is the result of the veggie's inherent sugars. In doughs, such as those for bread and pizza, the water absorption improves pliability for easy portioning and molding. Another benefit is that potatoes enhance the other ingredients' natural flavors.

On top of that, the root vegetable provides structure to chocolate cake. While adapting a gluten-free recipe to include potatoes for The Bake School, professional recipe developer, tester, and consultant, Janice Lawandi found that mashed potatoes act as starch in a cake, providing a lighter texture and more open crumb. Also, she had better results putting the potatoes through a ricer compared to when she used a traditional masher.

Mashed potatoes are just one of several secret ingredients that can level up your chocolate cake. Sauerkraut is a similar unexpected food combination that adds moisture, a slight tang, and a coconut-like texture. If you prefer to use less eccentric ingredients to add moisture to your cake, consider mixing Greek yogurt, mayonnaise, or sour cream into your batter. Along with imparting extra moisture, using brown sugar in chocolate cake instead of white sugar will make your dessert look a little darker and give it a slight butterscotch or caramel undertone because of the molasses.

To enhance the flavor profile of the cocoa powder or chocolate chunks, you can sprinkle espresso powder into a chocolate cake. Benjamina Ebuehi, author of "A Good Day To Bake," says that chocolate and espresso complement each other because they have several crossover flavors, and the espresso will deliver a creaminess to the cake, too. Additionally, you can use hot water to boost the richness because the heat makes the cocoa powder release trapped flavors as it dissolves. It's recommended to prepare the hot water and cocoa separately, allowing it to cool before mixing it with the other cake ingredients.