The Unexpected Vegetable That Makes Sweet Treats Irresistibly Moist

When you imagine cakes, dessert breads, pies, and other sweet treats, it would be understandable if you didn't immediately picture vegetables. Other than a zucchini bread here or a sweet potato pie there, we don't see many uses for veggies in dessert dishes or sweet snacks. But if you found out a certain vegetable could improve the texture of your next baking project and make your recipe's final results taste better than ever, we bet you'd be happy to try it. The sweet treat game-changer is the humble potato.

Potatoes are one of the vegetables you should be adding to your baked goods. This is because when unseasoned, they have a pretty neutral profile, so they won't add actual flavor or steal the spotlight from chocolate, cinnamon, or whatever your dessert is. But they will greatly elevate texture. They hold onto moisture, so in a cake or bread, they ensure a moist, never-dry consistency. They also have some weight to them, helping the structure of your baked goods.

Additionally, potatoes are nice and hearty, making desserts more filling; this is appealing for those of us balancing our sweet tooth with our healthy lifestyle. On that note, potatoes also add nutrients like vitamin C and potassium.

There are so many different ways to eat potatoes for dessert. Potatoes work wonders in chocolate cake, cinnamon buns, truffles, lemon bars, and more. If you've never had a donut made with potatoes, you're missing out. Krispy Kreme's original recipe called for spuds, and potato donuts continue to be a crowd-pleasing favorite today in places like Maine. Star chef Giada de Laurentiis uses mashed potatoes in her zeppoles, an Italian donut cousin.

Mashed potatoes are indeed one of the easiest formats through which to add tubers to baking recipes. They'll immediately lend dough creaminess while thickening them with their starch. The result is moist, rich, and structurally sound. You can also add taters as dehydrated potato flakes, potato starch, or potato flour. These dry forms can either serve as a little boost of texture and moisture alongside flour, or they can completely replace flour for a gluten-free treat.

To start incorporating potatoes into your desserts, making potato candy is a great place to begin — it's just mashed potatoes sweetened with vanilla and powdered sugar and then rolled with peanut butter. You won't believe how sweet spuds can taste. From there, add mashed potatoes to homemade donuts or to warm, delicious cinnamon buns you make at home, or use potato flour to make caramel apple cake or eggnog cake. You can even introduce potatoes into your dessert repertoire by crushing potato chips on ice cream or brownies for tasty saltiness and crunch.