Forget pumpkin everything season, maple sweet potato is the new flavor! This Sweet Potato Maple Cheesecake Bundt Cake is unbelievably moist and gloriously delicious! WOW your guests with this soon-to-be iconic cake!
With the Fall in full swing right now and Thanksgiving next week I wanted to create a cake that not only was delicious but also representative of the season. Now I know, I know, we all think once Fall hits it has to be every single thing under the sun flavored as pumpkin/pumpkin spice. Yeah I get it, it’s delicious but it’s so 5 years ago. It needs put to rest and a new flavor to become champion. Enter the Sweet Potato. Yes, sweet potato. Coming from a girl who, only 3 years ago, hated these things, my eyes have been opened. I have fallen totally head over heals in love with sweet potatoes. I would make them all the time for Mr. Fantabulous but for me, nope; I was a simple russet potato. Or if I was feeling randy I’d go for the red or yukon. But a sweet potato just seemed… wrong. Potatoes are meant to well, not taste like anything – that’s kinda the whole purpose of adding butter, sour cream, milk, bacon, salt, pepper or even chili. But the thought of putting cinnamon and brown sugar on a potato seemed…I don’t know…wrong. Yeah, I’m an idiot, I know that now.
It wasn’t until I decided to roast one, top it with honey and roasted grapes did I realize just how amazing they were. AND OMG don’t even get me started on how incredible they are in baked goods. Er um wait, that’s kinda the whole point of this recipe, huh? LOL Love you ♥ As you know I’ve been fortunate now to be a part of the Nordic Ware® family for about 2 years now – reviewing their PHENOMENAL bake and cookware plus creating mouth watering recipes.
Today I’m featuring their Fall Harvest Leaves Bundt Pan. It’s absolutely stunning made with the same stellar quality we’ve all come to love and expect from Nordic ware.
The pan is Bronze and made from Cast aluminum. It’s a 9 cup capacity and oven safe up to 400F. The inside is non-stick but as I’ve shared before, coat your pan with melted butter brushing every crevice with a pastry brush. You can then add flour or not. Depending on the type of cake I’m making I typically stick with just butter for these pans. See my post that’s all about how to properly coat your bundt cake for baking!
For 70 years as a family owned and operated company, Nordic Ware has proudly produced quality kitchenware products, primarily made in America at their Minneapolis headquarters. From humble beginnings, Nordic Ware has become an internationally distributed brand with a variety of collections, hundreds of products and millions of fans. Their iconic products include cookware, bakeware, grillware, microwave, and kitchen gadgets and accessories. 70 years is remarkable and the fact that’s family owned and operated is incredible!
This cake originally started as a muffin recipe I made a couple of years ago but in that one it had bourbon soaked raisins and crushed pecans. And it didn’t have that maple cheesecake in it. Yeah… maple cheesecake. Sink your virtual teeth into that one folks. Now by all means you can add the bourbon soaked raisins and crushed pecans to this recipe but this one, I wanted to let the sweet potato and maple be the stars here. Now how many of you have ever tried taking a cake batter and turning it into a muffin or taking a muffin batter and trying to make a cake out of it? More importantly how many of you have successes? Yeah it’s not as easy as it seems, huh?
Truth be told, it’s not that easy to take one batter and turn it into another. Granted they all have the same ingredients for the most part however they are fundamentally different. Cake batters tend to have more fat and sugar, are mixed considerably longer and obviously baked longer. Also the ingredient ratios are drastically different.
This cake took me 8, yes 8 iterations of it before I came upon a perfect end result. The first test one well, came out like a muffin, only rose about 1/2 way the pan (didn’t put in enough batter) and was sooooooooo dense. However we still ate it. I mean it’s still cake, duh. Rounds 2-3, the flavors were way off – too much leavening and again, a very heavy cake. Takes 4 & 5 were definitely better but waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much batter plus it was still heavy and dense. It wasn’t quite as moist as I wanted. Plus I made enough cake batter for a 12 cup pan.
Now this recipe, you may have some extra batter. If you do, do NOT try to overfill the pan or fill it up more than 2/3rds full (You want to leave about 1 1/2″ of air space). Just take that excess batter, spray some donut pans and bake these as donuts. For a topping, top them in a maple glaze with crushed pecans. BONUS! 2 recipes out of a single batter.
So anyway, it wasn’t until take 6 did decide to try something a tad different. I’m sure you’ve all heard of a “Poke” cake. It’s essentially a warm cake straight out the oven that is poked then sweetened condensed milk is poured over it and allowed to soak in. The cake is super moist and almost ‘wet’ inside. Now while I didn’t quite want that effect I did want it to be super moist. And it so happened to be that I had about half a can of this stuff in the fridge leftover from another recipe. Once I measured it out, into the batter it went – why not, right?!
Folks when this cake came out of the pan, I just knew it was going to be THE ONE. It smelled moist, warm, and Fall-like. You could smell the warmness of the sweet potato with that hint of cinnamon and for me, cheesecake has a very distinct smell. Plus that maple scent was intoxicating. Any who, while the cake cooled I reached out to you guys on Facebook asking what I should top this with (or at all). Some of you guys came off with some awesome suggestions – caramel, maple glaze, bourbon glaze while most of you said to just keep it simple. Just a simple dusting of confectioners’ sugar.
Honestly that was perfect for this cake. We often forget that if a cake is that good, it doesn’t need a bajillion layers, enough frosting to choke a goat, chocolate curls, caramel drizzles, sprinkles, disco dust and sea salt garnish. No, the cake should be able to stand on its own merit.
Folks that is THIS cake!
You know me though, I have to make a recipe several times before I post it. It’s the engineer in me. I ran this through 2 more iterations and each time it came out perfect. That’s when I knew I nailed the recipe! However proof is in the pudding…er um the cake. LOL
How’s it taste? I’ll tell you … FANFRIGGENTASTIC! The cake is super moist, the cheesecake is firm and the flavor combination is amazing. The texture is tender and it just melts in your mouth. Since the cheesecake is creamy you really don’t need that frosting layer. Honestly I think adding anything more to this would be overkill. This cake presents well. I had finished making the 8th iteration of this when the Fantabulous in-laws came to the house. They walked in, gave us both hugs and kisses and immediately Mama Fantabulous said “OHHHHHHHHHH what’s that?? That cake looks beautiful!” Now we didn’t eat it that day because we were so stuffed from all of the other food I made but I sent them home with half a cake. I got a call the next day “Oh Lori this cake is so good! OMG it’s delicious! I’m not sharing with Dad!” LOL That’s when you know you did good – when your Mother in law loves it.
And as you know, since I’m a part of the Nordic Ware family obviously this post is being sponsored by Nordic Ware® featuring their festively Fall Harvest Leaves Bundt Pan. All opinions of this ABSOLUTELY BREATHTAKINGLY BEAUTIFUL pan are mine. Both my Mom and Grandma only trusted their pans for their most prized baked goods. And let’s face it, if Mom and Grandma trusted them then you know they have to be incredible! Mom’s are never wrong!
PrintSweet Potato Maple Cheesecake Bundt Cake
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Ingredients
Cake
- 1 cup light brown sugar
- 1 cup plus 3 tablespoon cooked sweet potatoes, plain and mashed
- 12 tablespoon unsalted butter, room temperature
- 3 large eggs, room temperature
- 1 teaspoon maple extract
- 1/4 cup maple syrup
- 1/3 cup sweetened condensed milk
- 3 cups AP flour
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 tablespoon melted butter, unsalted
Maple Cheesecake Filling
- 8 ounces full fat cream cheese, room temperature and soft
- 1 large egg, room temperature
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup maple syrup
- 4 tablespoon flour
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F, rack in the lower third.
- With a pastry brush, brush the inside of your Nordic Ware Harvest Leaves Bundt pan with the 1 tablespoon melted butter. Be sure to get all nooks and crevices.
- In a bowl, sift together the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder and cinnamon; set aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the 12 tablespoon of butter and light brown sugar.
- With the mixer on low add in the eggs, one at a time until blended.
- Stop the mixer adding in the sweet potatoes, maple syrup, extract and sweetened condensed milk. Return the mixer to low just until combined scraping down the sides and bottom.
- Add in half of the dry mixture, slowly incorporate and then add the rest mixing just until blended with a few streaks of flour.
- Remove from the mixer, and scrape down the sides/bottom to blend in the rest; set aside.
- In a different bowl, using an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese and sugar until well combined. Add the egg, syrup, and flour and mix until well combined. Set aside.
- Using a spoon, spoon in 1 1/2” of cake batter into the pan – spoon it in to help prevent air pockets. Taking the spoon, pull some of the batter up the sides of the pan to form a cavity.
- In the cavity, spoon in the cheesecake filling. You created that cavity so the filling doesn’t touch the sides of the pan. If you find the filling is starting to expand, add more cake batter around the edges to contain the filling in.
- Once all of cheesecake filling is in, top with the cake batter. You want to make sure you leave 1 1/2” of space from the top of the pan as the cake will rise. If you have extra cake batter, just add that to a greased donut pan and bake as another treat!
- Before putting in the oven, tap the pan 3 times on the counter to help remove any air bubbles.
- Bake for 50 minutes on the lower third of the oven.
- After 50 minutes, remove the cake from the oven, put the rack in the middle and place the cake back in. Bake another 10 minutes or until a cake tester comes out with just a moist crumbs (cake crumbs that is).
- Remove the cake from the oven and set on a cooling rack. Allow to cool for 10 minutes in the pan before turning out onto a cooling rack.
- Allow to cool completely before dusting with confectioners’ sugar.
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