I’ve mentioned a couple of times that my favourite cake is carrot cake, and it’s so popular now that no-one thinks it’s peculiar to have a sweet thing with a vegetable in it; when it first started appearing, a lot of people were almost horrified at the thought… a vegetable? A vegetable???
This is only modern thinking; at times when certain things were in short supply, people had to be imaginative and think back to the old ways of doing things. During the war when most food was rationed in Britain, sugar was rationed and most of it was home produced using sugar beet. All sorts of inventive ways were found to add variety and indulgence to diets.
Now once again, adding vegetables to cakes is becoming popular and there are recipes all over the place… I have to say, that apart from carrot cake, I haven’t tasted any that I really thought were wonderful… and the beetroot cake I made, I confess, was so inedible that we had to recycle it (put it in the green waste!)
I won’t be put off though! I’m going to try again! I have found a site with some great looking cakes and desserts! Courgette and orange loaf (more like a teabread) potato chocolate cup cakes, pumpkin cheesecake, sweet potato bundt cake… there’s a whole world of vegetable cakes and treats!
http://www.foodnetwork.co.uk/article/hush-hush-vegetable-cakes.html
Lois Elsden 