Spicy cake with parsnip, nuts raisins & dates
Ingredients
For the cake
- 220 g finely gratted parsnip or carrots if you prefer
- 100 g pitted dates
- 180 g flour you can mix different types
- 30 g cane sugar coconut sugar
- 25 g coconut sugar or no coconut sugar and 55 g cane sugar
- 3 eggs
- 50 g butter
- 25 g almond powder
- 10 cl milk preferably whole milk
- 10 g baking yeast
- 1 handful of raisins
- 1 handful of crushed walnut kernels
- 1.5 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp spice mix for gingerbread or spices for chai or 4 spices mix
- ½ tsp nutmeg
- ½ tsp vanilla powder
- ½ tsp powdered ginger
- 1 pinch of salt
For the icing (optional)
- 90 g confectioner's sugar
- 1.5 to 2 tbsp lemon juice
Instructions
Cake preparation
- Mix in a large bowl the dry ingredients: flour, sugar, yeast, salt and spices.
- In another bowl, beat the eggs with the milk. Add the melted butter and mix.
- Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and mix vigorously with a whisk.
- Preheat the oven to 180°C.
- Wash and peel the parsnips.
- Using a food processor or grater, finely grate the parsnips.
- Cut the dates lengthwise into 3 or 4 pieces.
- Coarsely crush the nuts.
- Add the parsnips, dates, nuts and raisins to the dough. Mix well to distribute the ingredients in the dough.
- Pour the preparation into a rectangular cake tin (I used a 21 x 21 cm tin for this recipe) covered with baking paper or greased.
- Bake for 30 to 35 minutes. Check the baking time with the tip of a knife.
- Once the cake is baked, unmould it and let it cool on a wire rack.
Icing (optional)
- Mix the powdered sugar with the lemon juice in a bowl and very gradually add the juice. You may need less than indicated. You should obtain a pasty texture, not too liquid, which can spread easily.
- Spread it on the cake once it has cooled.
- Let the icing set before serving.
Notes
As indicated above, you can also decide to turn this parsnip cake into a carrot cake :) or mix both!
You could replace the almond powder by hazelnut powder.
The icing is optional. Nevertheless I reduced the quantity of sugar in the cake considering the added sugar of the icing. If you prepare a cake without the icing, you might want to add a bit more sugar to the cake!