Bakery Recipe: Piloncillo Sweet Potato Cake

A vegan recipe (my first!) for sheet cake.

Today I bring you cake and not just any cake. A cake inspired by the Mexican dish calabaza en tacha, where pumpkin is cooked way down in a spiced piloncillo syrup until soft as can be and then eaten with crema. It’s a meal usually prepared around Día de los Muertos and for the holidays, and a recipe I’d been attempting to perfect since October when the idea first nudged me. I see an ingredient, any ingredient, and my brain makes a direct line to cake.

Instead of pumpkin, I wanted to use sweet potatoes which felt more managable and would lend itself to preparation outside of the holiday season, and I don’t know about you but I’ve been ready to be done with the holiday season since the day after Christmas. In 2022 I made these pumpkin brown butter conchas, where the pumpkin pureé replaced the eggs. It was the same eggless idea here. Once very fork tender, and the piloncillo syrup has thickened and reduced by about half, pureéing the mixture gives us the base for cake. Not just any cake.

A single cone of piloncillo, a single sweet potato.

My decision to make this a vegan cake came from the prior knowledge that the sweet potatoes would have enough binding properties to hold the cake together. From there it was about figuring out the ratios to get the hydration right. I riffed and adapted this recipe based on this ginger piloncillo cake that I devloped back in 2021. Where I would normally add butter, I swapped in grapeseed oil; sweet potato replaced the eggs; oat milk, for the buttermilk.

My first couple attempts were severely underhydrated. Not enough liquid to replace from the eggs; too much flour; not enough sweet potato, too much sweet potato. The roller coaster of recipe developing. One the third test I got it right and was reminded how GOOD it feels to give the time and energy to an idea and see it all the way through. An idea that is now cake.

Evolution of piloncillo + sweet potato (plus water) into cake base.

A vegan bake is not something I thought I’d be spending that time and energy on. I didn’t grow up with or experience vegan culture until well into adulthood, and I can count the number of vegan cakes I’ve eaten on one solid hand. Not really being snobby about it I just didn’t feel the need to seek out vegan cakes, and I genuinely enjoy working with eggs (meringue!), butter (good in everything), buttermilk (do I everrrr love using buttermilk especially in a cake for its tenderizing qualities). My job as a baker is to make delicious food. My job as recipe developer is to use ingredients in smart, creative ways that really showcase those ingredients. Using eggs here for this cake would mute the sweet potato and piloncillo flavor more than I felt I could live with.