Sweet Potato Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

My sister in law Rebecca made this cake yesterday. I brought over spinach lasagna for dinner, and then we had this scrumptious cake for desert! She found the recipe from the The Cake Mix Doctor, and then made her own tasty adjustments. As you can see, the cake has a wonderful texture. It's rather dense & moist from the sweet potato, but in no way is it undercooked. Perfect! The recipe calls for caned sweet potatoes, but she used the fresh ones, mashed with buttermilk. And, to add a bit more flavor, she added vanilla. I can't believe the original recipe didn't call for any. For even more changes, the frosting recipe called for coconut and pecans. Since cream cheese frosting and spice cake are both really rich, she opted to leave out the add-ins. I think that was a great idea, since the focus was really on the cake; not on everything else. For a future suggestion, Rebecca mentioned using a plain butter cream frosting next time, since this particular cream cheese frosting is extremely rich. Either way would be great, since the cake is really the star.

After dinner, I took a piece home for Greg. It was a great just home from work treat for him. Like the rest of us at dinner, he just loved it. Thankfully, Rebecca gave me this cook book as a wedding gift, he can make this for himself whenever he wants! But since it's just us, maybe cupcakes, and freezing the rest might be a better idea. For those of you who don't know, Greg can also make a wonderful cake.

Recipe:

Cake:
1 C. cooked sweet potato (1-2 potatoes)
2/3 C. buttermilk
1 package (18.25 oz) plain spice cake mix
3 large eggs
1/3 C. vegetable oil
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla

Cream Cheese Frosting:
8oz cream cheese, room temp
8 tbs butter, room temp
2 1/2 C. powdered sugar, sifted
1 tsp vanilla extract

For the cake:
-Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 2 9 inch round cake pans.

-Mash the cooked sweet potato with the butter milk

-Combine cake mix, eggs, oil, cinnamon, vanilla and sweet potato mash. Mix until combined.

-Divide the batter into the two cake pans. Bake side by side, 28-31 minutes.

-After cooling for 10 minutes, remove the cake from the pans and allow to cool to room temp.

-Once the cake has cooled, beat the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla until blended. Add the powdered sugar a bit at a time. Blend until fluffy.

-Frost the cake.

-Enjoy!!!