Parsnip Cake with Ginger Cream Cheese Frosting (Unlocked)

now with my favorite Fall salad

Originally published for paying subscribers October 10, 2021. Unlocked now with the addition of a recipe for my go-to fall salad!

Remember that farmers co-op I mentioned in the September newsletter that we pick up a massive box of veggies from every week?

Yeah, it’s getting out of hand.

My mom and I have been spending hours each week coming up with a plan of attack. Our crispers are overflowing — celery tops poking out of the drawers, radishes slowly crushing loaves of bread, carrots going soft as they languish in the cheese drawer.

So far, we’ve done a decent job of keeping on top of it. We’ve gotten away with having to toss maybe 1% of the produce. But we were finally stumped — what were we supposed to do with several pounds of parsnips?

We started by throwing our hands up in frustration.

I’d never cooked a single recipe that used parsnips. Parsnips have always seemed like a very old vegetable to me. Like something that my great-great grandmother would’ve grown in her garden or that middle-class London ladies would’ve picked up at Victorian markets to roast around a leg of lamb for dinner. My dad (who I will make quite clear is not old) remembers eating them at his grandmother’s house when he was a kid. But I, to my knowledge, had never eaten them before.

My mom and I brainstormed and looked up recipes until, in a flash of brilliance, it came to my mom — Ginger Parsnip Cake.

Parsnips look like white carrots, and we love carrot cake in my family. So why not?

We got researching and found that Parsnip Cake is in fact a thing. And oh dear glorious goodness, it’s delicious.

Below, you’ll find our recipe that we pulled together from several recipes online and put our own spin on. If you do decide to make this recipe, you’ll find yourself with a delightfully spicy fall dessert that uses a delightfully spicy fall vegetable that goes just as well with wine at the end of dinner as it does with a cup of coffee in the morning.

Just be prepared — we ate an entire 9x13 inch cake in about twelve hours. I highly suggest doubling the recipe.

Parsnip Cake with Ginger Cream Cheese Frosting

You will need:

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

3/4 cup sugar

1 Tablespoon ground ginger

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

3/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

3/4 teaspoon ground allspice

3/4 teaspoon ground cloves

3 large eggs

1/2 cup light olive oil

1/2 cup milk

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 packed cups peeled and chopped parsnips (I recommend chopping them in half lengthwise and then chopping them into small pieces. You can also use a food processor like this one from KitchenAid to get the pieces really small. However, the pieces get so soft from baking that they actually add a lovely texture to the cake)

For the frosting:

4 ounces (half a packet) cream cheese

2 Tablespoons butter at room temperature

2 teaspoons fresh ginger, peeled and grated

2 1/2 cups powdered sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

What to do:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Rub the bottom and sides of a 9x13 inch baking pan with butter then dust with flour, making sure to evenly coat the bottom and sides. Combine the flour, sugar, ground ginger, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, nutmeg, allspice, and cloves in a medium bowl.

In a separate larger bowl, whisk together the eggs, olive oil, milk, and vanilla until combined. Dump the dry ingredient mixture into the wet mixture and stir just until combined.

Stir in the parsnips.

Pour the batter into your prepared pan. Bake about 30 minutes or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.

Allow the cake to cool completely on a rack.

For the frosting, beat together the cream cheese, butter, fresh ginger, and vanilla together until smooth. Gradually add the powdered sugar and beat until it is smooth. Spread the prepared frosting evenly over your cake.

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Unlocked Additions

As Fall comes ringing in with gloriously yellow leaves, I find myself reaching for gloriously crisp apples. This salad combines the crunch and zing of honeycrisp apples and chopped red onions, with the nuttiness of crushed walnuts, and holds it all together with creamy, crumbly feta.

I hope you enjoy it as much as me and my family do!

captured on a fly-fishing hike with my dad in my hometown

Fall Breeze Salad

You will need:

Mixed spinach and arugula

1 honeycrisp apple, cored and chopped into bite-sized pieces

1/3 cup red onions, chopped

1/3 cup walnuts, crushed under the flat edge of a knife

1/4 cup feta cheese, crumbled

Olive oil and Balsamic vinegar to taste (I usually do about a Tbsp of olive oil and tsp of vinegar per serving)

What to do:

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and enjoy!

Thanks for reading! I very highly recommend this cake. I cannot express how perfect the spice/sugar ratio is. This is quickly becoming a favorite dessert of mine, and I hope you enjoy it. If you’re already thinking ahead to Thanksgiving or have a Halloween party coming up, bring this.

Come back next month for more story-recipes, and in the meantime, you can access the entire backlog of “Food & Fodder” here!

I realize there’s quite a few new folks here, so I want to say hi! and direct you to where you can find some of my other work. My book, “No Regrets,” which follows the children of two immigrant families in Chicago from the 1930s to the early 2000s, was published through an Independent Publishing House in NYC last year. It’s available through Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Bookshop, and so many other places! If you’re like me and prefer audiobooks, you can find the audiobook version of “No Regrets” on Audible.

Looking for something spooky to read this October? Check out these three stories of mine!

Thanks, as always, for reading,

Juliana

PS —

Have you guys heard about Bookshop?

If you love supporting smaller, brick-and-mortar bookstores but love shopping from the comfort of your home (or, like me, you live in a teeny tiny town with a lovely but sometimes limited book selection) you’ve got to check them out. 10% of their sales go to local book stores, and 10% goes to their affiliates (like me!) every time you buy a book. They’ve got all the selection of a big online bookstore, and they’ve donated $20 million and counting to bookstores!

I now have a little “storefront” on their site, so if you’re wanting to see or buy some of my favorite books, head on over to my Bookshop site! Right now, my Bookshop lists include my Cookbook Collection, My Work, My Top 10 (always changing), and My New Foray into Scary Books.

You can find a favorite cookbook of mine, “Half-Baked Harvest: Super Simple,” there!

If you’re looking for newsletter recommendations catered to your interests, I highly recommend The Sample. They send you a curated sample of newsletters once a day that you can subscribe to in one click! Plus, clicking on this link can help more people find “Food & Fodder!”