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? Why mashed potatoes enhance chocolate cake and other baked goods W.