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I'm so glad to be finally baking again. The weather cooled down enough in the past few days for me to crank up the oven again and it was well worth the effort. I made a modified version of the Victoria Sponge cake from Harry Eastwood's Red Velvet & Chocolate Heartbreak. I've never been a conventional baker and this book is right up my alley. It is full of recipes for incredible looking and tasting desserts made with fruits and vegetables. I'm not a  big fan of most dairy free/sugar-free/wheat-free etc. desserts  because they often lack any nutritious ingredient. I prefer to include good stuff instead of focusing on removing the so called bad-stuff. The good news with baking with fruits and veggies is that it requires less sugar due to the natural sweetness the fruits and veggies add. You also don't need butter or oil. I'm really not sure why but my cakes come out moist, light and fluffy without them. The secret ingredient however, is rice flour. Something magical happens when rice flour is mixed with a veggie like zucchini, eggs, sugar, baking soda and vanilla extract. You end up with an incredible fluffy & moist cake that you just can't get with regular flour. Go figure!

On this particular baking adventure I experimented with some Japanese sweet potatoes sitting on my counter top.
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I decided on a Lemon-Vanilla Sponge Cake which I made by adding 200g Japanese sweet potatoes (peeled + finely grated) into a batter of 3 medium eggs with 150g of brown sugar (whisked together for 5 minutes), 100g rice flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp vanilla extract , and 1/2 tsp lemon extract. I combined the ingredients together and poured the batter evenly into two 9 inch baking pans. I placed the pans into a preheated 350 degree oven for 20 minutes.

I removed the cakes from the pans and let cool for about another 20 minutes. Once cooled, I spread creme fraiche onto the top of one of the cakes and placed the second cake on top. For the topping I crushed some roasted almonds with dried rosemary and spread it over the cake. Then sprinkled some powdered sugar in the center of the cake. I decided at the last minutes to slice some strawberries and place them around the powdered sugar.
 


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