How to POST with XML payload in node-red

Just starting to work with node-red and having trouble getting XML loaded into a javascript object msg.payload that node-red needs for sending a post request to my server.

My API is looking for the following:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <userRequest>
      <authentication>
          <useame>foo</useame>
          <password>bar</password>
      </authentication>
      <action>doit</action>
  </userRequest>

But without escaping the XML, I can't get it loaded into the object. And I can't find the right way to escape it.

Advice?