Measure twice... edit once!

About two weeks ago, I was doing some online research at work - checking out foodie sites for potential advertising options - and came across Edible Vancouver Magazine, a local online magazine that caters to all things food. Searching around, I found their recipe section, and was intrigued with a recipe for Sweet Potato Maple Cake. I'm always on the lookout for sweet potato recipes as Peter, my Kiwi husband, loves kumara, a root veggie native to NZ, and the North American sweet potato is about as close as you can get to that unique kumara flavour. [My all-time favourite dish is banana and kumara salad, but nothing beats his Mum's leg of lamb and roasted kumara dinner! Okay, I'm digressing... and salivating at the thought!] I bookmarked the recipe, deciding it would be a perfect dessert for Easter to take on our trip to Sechelt to see Stefan and his family.

As is my usual baking process, I re-read the recipe at least 30 times over the last week and on Wednesday evening prepped the sweet potatoes [the recipe called for one cup... typically, I made five! My mother always said I should have been a cook in the army!]. Something was niggling at me, and I couldn't quite place it, but it finally dawned on me last night just as I was gathering all my ingredients, that the recipe wasn't correct. It had to do with the measurements for the flour, which were in imperial and metric. 1 cup does not equal 425mL! Rats! I checked the measurements on my usual conversion site and then searched online for some other sweet potato maple cake recipes and sure enough, all of them indicated at least 1.5 to 3 cups of flour. Rats again!

This wouldn't do! I grabbed my spurtle and shot off two emails, one to the magazine site and one to the author of the recipe, who has her own blog. That was at 10:30pm last night. Early this morning I had a lovely email from the author with a revised recipe... and an equally nice letter from the publication. In fact, they found another error in the recipe: 1.5 cups of buttermilk instead of a half cup (sweet potato maple soup!).

Happily, I gathered all my ingredients and re-read the new and improved recipe one more time. Zut alors! Another error! Butter had been replaced by the word buttermilk! Conspiracy theories notwithstanding, I started to think this is how people become paranoid and end up checking and re-checking they've locked their door on the way out, or patting their pockets over and over again to make sure they have their keys!

I couldn't resist emailing back the author. Bless her heart... she probably thinks I'm some wacko who is stalking her and her recipes! Honest, I'm not! After all, I work as a proofreader in the marketing department at UBC Continuing Studies! It's second nature to correct everything and everyone!

I've checked the website and sure enough, the recipe [see above for the link to Sweet Potato Maple Cake] has been fixed! Kudos to the publication and I also want to acknowledge Claire Lassam. She has a lovely blog site and some incredible recipes: Just Something Pretty. Have a gander!

As is my wont, I did tweak the recipe a tad: added ginger (it's the spice of choice in this household) and nutmeg. I also left the cake in for a total of 50 minutes, as it was still raw at the recommended 30 minutes.

Just out of the oven - the aroma is to die for!

...and I've just taken it out of my beautiful "Heritage" bundt pan
[but that's another story for another day!!]

A light sprinkling of icing sugar (or maybe an orange-flavoured glaze?), some fresh whipped cream and a pot of fresh coffee on the side, and I think we're good to go! [I just have to make sure it gets to Sechelt in one piece. Do you hear that, Peter?!]

Thank you Claire - can't wait to taste it!


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