You say "Potato." I say "What the...?"

You may or may not know that National Bundt Day is on Nov 15.  Every year Mary the Food Librarian hosts "I Like Big Bundts."  This is the third year in a row where she has made a bundt every day for a month leading up to Nov 15.  This year I didn't want to leave the celebratory baking to the very last minute, so I made a bundt a little early. 

I scoured the interwebs for a suitable recipe to try out.  I settled on the chocolate potato bundt cake from La Receta de la Felicidad.  I thought a cake with potato in it was very intriguing.  A few years ago I tried a recipe for Homemade Almond Joys that contained potatoes.  They turned out super yummy.  I figured, if potato plays nice with coconut, why wouldn't it with chocolate cake?

Why indeed.  I mixed everything up and popped that bad boy in the oven. I peeked in at my creation half way through it's allotted cooking time...things were not looking good.  The cake had barely risen.  I called my dear loving husband to vent my frustrations.  When I told Mrblocko my cooking woes he started singing "My bundt's not risin'" to the tune of Jim Morrison's Mojo Risin'.  Yeah.  Thanks a lot.  It was really helpful.  Especially since I couldn't dislodge that song from my brain for the rest of the day.

This is what I pulled out of the oven after 30 minutes:

The cake should be to the top of the bundt pan.  NOT half way up.  I tested it with a toothpick in hopes that a few more minutes in the oven would magically make the cake rise.  Nope.  That toothpick had zero crumbs on it.  The cake was done.

I let the cake rest in the pan for 10 minutes before I turned it out onto a cooling rack.  The cake fell even more. This was not a "Big bundt".  Oh baby's got back...just not in the good old Sir Mix a Lot way.  "She's a brick house" is more accurate.

I had flashbacks of my Horrible Zebra Bundt Mishap at the end of last year.  That cake was so oily you could wring it out and make french fries with the drippings.  At least I didn't have that problem this time.

I cut a slice off to test it out.  Maybe it would be ok, even it if was dense.  Look how tiny that slice is in my hand!  I took a bite of my teeny tiny itty bitty brick bundt. Rest assured, I didn't break any teeth, but...

There was something that didnt dawn on me until I tested the cake...there is only 3/4 c powdered sugar in this cake.  That is not enough sugar for a whole cake.  Cake is supposed to be sweet.  Or did I miss the memo where they changed that?

At first  I thought something must have gone wrong when the author made the conversions for the English version of the recipe. I looked up how many grams of powdered sugar make up a cup and several sites said 200 grams.  So...3/4 c for 150 grams of powdered sugar seems to be the right amount.  I looked back in my blog archives and every cake that I've made contains at least 1 1/2 cups of granulated sugar. 

Bundt cakes, unless specifically intended to be savory, (like this Pizza Frittata Bundt,) should be sweet enough on their own to not NEED frosting.  You only really frost or glaze a bundt when you want to take it over the top with sweetness.

At this point I didn't feel like wasting more butter/chocolate to make frosting/ganache that might not even make the cake more palatable.  So I reached for the next best thing...Nutella.  Aha!  The cake actually tasted good.  Viva Nutella!  Your powers of awesomeness are awesome!

My crazy daughter loved this cake.  Even plain.  Without Nutella.  Reason# 5467 why she is an alien from another planet.  Child, I will never understand you.  You don't like mushrooms or black beans, but you like cake that is not even remotely sweet?  Sigh.  When your people come to take over the planet, tell them to be kind to me OK?

So the million dollar question is why didn't my cake rise? It hasn't been overly dry or humid out.  The recipe on the blog looks like it rose perfectly.  I can't figure out what I did wrong.