I think it's likely that we all have ideas ricocheting between the walls of our skulls that require a small push to bring into fruition, almost as if we're waiting for some kind of divinely ordained permission to proceed. Things, big or small, that are by no means impossible, but need a kick to push out the inertia that keeps us from taking action. It will not surprise you that many of my own thoughts on the matter are food-related. Some get written down in a red notebook that was gifted to me by friend-of-the-blog Keith back in January (it will likely be the first and only notebook that I completely fill with writing), some are consigned to the ether whereby their potential resurfacing is mired in uncertainty.
Guys, I'm not fucking around here, all this cognitive pirouetting was catalysed by a tub of cake spread which was acquired by my household. In the lobby of my building, a communal box has been established where residents can put in any spare essentials that they may have, which can go towards anyone who may be running short. This box has, so far, been a mixture of primarily necessities burnished with just a peppering of grocery-based esoterica. This has included cans of Guinness stout, bottles of peach-flavoured sparkling water and, case in point, tubs of Betty Crocker coffee flavoured buttercream. I'm not sure what led someone to have two spare containers of this stuff, but I'm going to let myself think that the veritable Ms. Crocker herself lives somewhere within the building.
If you hadn't already assumed so, we did indeed take the tub of coffee buttercream with us. I am aware that it is apparently disgraceful to use and enjoy store-bought buttercream, but we all ate spoonfuls from the tub and were won over; even Rebecca who doesn't like coffee. Owen was so inspired by this experience that he resolved to make a carrot cake, a pretty significant development given that he's not that much of a cake fan. Spoiler alert: he did a cracking job, and the discarded buttercream finally found it's purpose in life. My single role in producing the cake, grating the carrots, did make me reflect on how the carrot cake formula can be changed up. I know, having the chutzpah to question to perfect balance in play here is an act of supreme arrogance, but do bear with me.
The main question in my head was "what if I were to replace the grated carrots with parsnip?" That night, I tried to consciously go to bed earlier than I usually do, so at about half-eleven, I found myself laying in bed, drifting off to sleep with the seeds of an idea ready to germinate. I slept peacefully for a grand total of two hours, before resurfacing once again. I tried reading a book for a bit, but to no avail. It seemed like the night had opened itself up, and I had to find a way to occupy myself until morning. Obviously, a night of disrupted sleep is far from ideal, but it gave me a space of time where my idea was still fresh. Otherwise it could have easily just melted away like so many others. Small digression, could you imagine if, at the end of our lives, we could visit an archive full of the ideas we had dreamed up and forgotten? Perhaps what I've described is purgatory.
When it got to about half-five, I went to stand on the balcony for a little while and was greeted with the alchemical gold standard of morning. The dawntime birds were all lost in conversation, the air had a chill to it that's been a thing of rarity recently and all of my surroundings had a stillness to them as if each of their individual atoms had ceased to vibrate. Most notably, a portion of the sky had taken on a honeyed colour, surrounding a smouldering epicentre. It wasn't the ceiling of flame that characterised some of the more dramatic sunrises, but a contained blaze within the cloudy pastel blue. It reminded me that I hadn't seen the early morning in quite some time, and just how calming it can be. Occasionally, I worry that I find it hard to feel big things and get swept up in a situation, but this time, all I needed to do was inhale and exhale periodically.
The elusive feature of calmness is that it allows you to feel a lot more open about the ideas orbiting your mind. It was easy to look into the great sky yoke and say to myself "I'm going to do this", and so the wheels kicked into motion. My original idea was to keep the formula relatively similar to that of a carrot cake, but with a honey buttercream and a scattering of toasted pine nuts. Turns out, pine nuts are pretty expensive, and I wasn't willing to pay £3.60 for something that would only serve as a cake topping, let alone recommend that others do so too. Hazelnuts, truly the relatable friend of the nut kingdom, swooped in to take their rightful place. I retained the idea for a honey buttercream, but decided that I would give it a saltier edge. Eventually I realised that the flavour profile here was that of a honey-glazed parsnip roasted in brown butter, which sat just fine with me.
This cake is easy to assemble, and also relatively cheap as cakes go. One of the great things about vegetable cakes (as some, understandably, may need convincing) is that they tend to use cheaper ingredients than their fruity or chocolate-based counterparts. This is probably a good recipe to try if you're on the fence about parsnip in a cake; the taste isn't vegetal at all, but you do get a slight pleasant woodiness towards the end of each bite. Plus, it's not as if you're going to have to remortgage anything to make it. The ingredient list may look long, but 4/5 components from the buttercream also appear within the cake, so it is much more approachable than it might initially appear!
Parsnip & Salted Honey Cake with Hazelnuts
Preparation time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 30-35 minutes
Ingredients
Cake
160g plain flour
3 large eggs
230ml vegetable oil
160g caster sugar
100g grated parsnip
2 tbsp clear honey
3 tbsp hazelnuts, toasted and chopped
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
Topping
200g unsalted butter, softened and cubed
100g caster sugar
3 tbsp honey, plus 1 tsp for drizzling
1 tbsp hazelnuts, toasted and chopped
1/2 tsp salt
Method
Preheat the oven to 170°C (for gas ovens) or 150°C (for fan) and grease and line the base of two 9-inch round cake tins.
Add the oil, sugar, honey and eggs to a large mixing bowl and whisk until combined and smooth.
Sift in the flour, spices, salt, baking powder and bicarb and stir with a wooden spoon until all of the ingredients have combined together.
Add the hazelnuts and the parsnip to the mix and stir through until they have been distributed evenly throughout.
Spoon the batter evenly into the prepared baking tins (I don't have an eye for estimation so I find a weighing scale is handy here), ensuring that the tops are smoothed out. Bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes.
Remove the cakes from the oven and allow them to cool in their tins for a further five minutes, before turning them out on to a cooling rack. Allow them to cool for about an hour before applying the buttercream.
To make the buttercream, add the butter and sugar to a mixing bowl and whisk until the mix is pale, fluffy and aerated. The time this takes will vary depending on what equipment you are using. I hand whisked, and it took me about five minutes.
Mix the salt and honey into the buttercream, ensuring it is all combined. Spread the buttercream consistently over both layers of the cake. To achieve a neat finish, position the spreading knife on the radius of the cake. Turn the plate, while keeping the knife in the same position, going all the way around. This should make the buttercream more smoothly spread and consistent.
Stack the two layers together, and sprinkle the top with hazelnuts. Drizzle the remainder of the honey over the top in whatever pattern you may like!
This cake should be kept in the fridge until ready to serve.
Notes & Adjustments
The availability of flour at the moment is still pretty inconsistent. If you can only find self-raising rather than plain then that's fine, just take out 1 tsp of baking powder from the original recipe. You are also welcome to use wholemeal flour, if that's what you have available. You could also try other alternative flours, but these vary a lot more in terms of how you should bake with them (and I am very inexperienced in that department!)
If parsnips don't appeal to you, then you could also recreate this with carrots instead.
I tried to find soft light brown sugar to use in this recipe, but I couldn't find it anywhere. If you can find it, then by all means try it out, but the white sugar does provide good results.
If you feel confident enough to try it, you could always sub the hazelnuts on the top of the cake with pine nuts. If you do this, I would remove completely the hazelnuts from within the cake, halve the amount of salt in the buttercream and toast the pine nuts before sprinkling them on the cake.
You can also use salted butter for the buttercream, and take out the extra salt.
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