Dominican Sweet Potato Cake Pan de Batata

If the tropical paradise Dominica  is on your bucket list and you can’t get there anytime soon, have a taste of this cake to transport you to the islands. With an ingredient list that has coconut, sweet potato, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg, the spicy aroma will transport you to that Caribbean Island.

This Sweet Potato cake or Pan de Batata is usually made for special occasions. This is an unusual cake recipe in that it uses no flour, is gluten free and it comes out quite light.  The texture is  It is not unlike the Malaysian Kuih Bingka Ubi which uses tapioca. Using the desiccated coconut in the recipe gives the cake an interesting texture.

This cake is very easy to make and does not need highly technical baking skills nor lots of ingredients. It is a great way to add more low G.I sweet potato to your diet too.

The recipe below is what I used but after tasting the final result, I would swap a few ingredients like using coconut milk instead of whole milk, use a bit more ginger and use a different sugar for another level of flavour. I used Dark Muscavado sugar to give it that richer darker colour. You could also use panela, an unrefined raw cane sugar, which is the traditional sugar that is produced and consumed throughout Latin America and the Carribean. It will add a lovely dimension of flavour to your cake and will it a nice colour too.

But as per usual, feel free to tweak the recipe as you like. You can also adjust the spices that are used in the recipe too.

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Dominican Sweet Potato Cake Pan de Batata

Ingredients

• 900 g of sweet potatoes
• 2 eggs
• 320 g cup of brown sugar
• 250 ml cup of whole milk
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• ½ cup finely chopped coconut or dessicated coconut
• 110 g butter at room temperature or 80ml of vegetable oil
• 2 tsp of grated ginger
• 1 tsp of cinnamon powder
• 1 tsp of cloves powder
• ½ tsp nutmeg powder

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 175 ºC
• Line and grease a 9" baking pan or a loaf tin
• Peel the sweet potatoes and finely if possible.You can get a better result using a food processor or even a spiraliser. Use the finer option and make noodles with the sweet potato. When done, just chop this into small pieces.
• Add all the remaining ingredients to the sweet potato and whisk until it is well-mixed. This is how mine looked.
  
• Pour the mixture into the baking tin and bake for 35 minutes.
• Check if the cake is done by using a skewer of a clean knife and it comes out clean.

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About Dominica

Dominica is  a volcanic Island in the Caribbean that is covered in lush rain forest. As a destination, there are many attractions from the high mountain for hiking, hot springs to soak in, gushing waterfalls, clear blue water for scuba diving and snorkelling, plentiful golf courses, the Creole Music festival, carnival and white sand beaches.

It is sometimes called one the Nature Isle of the Caribbean for its abundant unspoilt natural beauty. Some call it a secret of the Caribbean and is still not that well known, especially not to visitors from the UK. Things might change as there are increasingly more choices for holidays to the Dominica being offered.

The diving is especially good as the clear blue waters around the island are teeming with live corals and unusual and rare sealife. Sounds like paradise to me.

This recipe was done in collaboration with Inntravel