Food, Frugal family meals
Fab parsnip & syrup cake
02 November 2010
In the hunt for a birthday cake for Rex I stumbled across this recipe in Good Food Magazine. It was the winner of Good Food’s 20th birthday cake competition and frankly I can see why. I was looking for a recipe that adults would want to get stuck into as well as the kids and this definitely ticked that box. It was really easy to make, looked exactly like the picture, really moist and the parsnip gave a surprising but delicious twist to your average cake whilst at a stretch delivering one of your 5 a day. Big thumbs up from all the mum’s at the party so thought I would share.
Ingredients:
175g butter, plus extra for greasing
250g demerara sugar
100ml maple syrup
3 large eggs
250g self-raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp mixed spice
250g parsnips, peeled and grated
1 medium eating apple, peeled, cored and grated
50g pecans, roughly chopped
zest and juice 1 small orange
icing sugar, to serve
For the filling:
250g tub mascarpone
3-4 tbsp maple syrup
Instructions:
Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Grease 2 x 20cm sandwich tins and line the bases with baking parchment. Melt butter, sugar and maple syrup in a pan over gentle heat, then cool slightly. Whisk the eggs into this mixture, then stir in the flour, baking powder and mixed spice, followed by the grated parsnip, apple, chopped pecans, orange zest and juice. Divide between the tins, then bake for 25-30 mins until the tops spring back when pressed lightly.
Cool the cakes slightly in the tins before turning out onto wire racks to cool completely. Just before serving, mix together the mascarpone and maple syrup. Spread over one cake and sandwich with the other.
Dust with icing sugar just before serving.
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