Everyday Dorie: Parsnip and Cranberry Cake
November 27, 2020 at 8:30 pm | Posted in cakes & tortes, everyday dorie, groups, layer cakes, sweet things | 8 CommentsTags: cake, everyday dorie, layer cake
This Parsnip and Cranberry Cake was the star of the show for our Thanksgiving-for-two dinner last night. And for leftovers night tonight. And I’m sure for leftovers-turned-into-something-else night tomorrow. It is very good. Originally, this cake is a big triple-layer nine-incher, but since we were solo for the holiday, I scaled the recipe back to a third of that to get two (rather tall) nice six-inch layers. I pretty much expected it to taste like carrot cake, until I realized the spicing is quite different. This one has ground coriander, grated fresh ginger and orange instead of cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. It’s filled and frosted with cream cheese icing, but it has a sneaky layer of cranberry sauce inside, too. It also should have had chopped fresh cranberries mixed into the batter and sugared cranberries on top, but I was working with a partial bag of berries, and after making the sauce, I didn’t have any extras. Rather than the berries in batter, I used chopped candied orange zest (and left out the sugared fresh zest in the recipe) and put some bloops of sauce on top of the finished cake, along with some maple-parsnip chips. I don’t always go for the “nearly naked” style of decoration…like someone did the crumb coat and then said “to heck with it”…but here, I thought it was kind of charming with that little bit of cranberry sauce peaking out.
For the recipe, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan, and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to see all of our cakes this week.
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I didn’t manage to frost mine like I wanted (minimalist) but yours is perfect. As always. Interestingly, I HAVE made a carrot cake with orange and ginger before so I knew I’d love this. Luckily I only made a tiny one because otherwise I would have eaten the entire “serves 16” cake myself!
Comment by Mardi (eat. live. travel. write.)— November 28, 2020 #
The maple parsnip chip does it for me, adding a new dimension to an already lovely cake. This is one spectacular cake!
Comment by Shirley @ EverOpenSauce— November 28, 2020 #
Wow fancy cake. This was so worth the work. Sounds like all your substitutions worked out. Happy Thanks giving.
Comment by Diane Zwang— November 30, 2020 #
Your cake is definitely charming and I would say also like a piece of art…those parsnip shards are a beautiful addition! So pretty! Happy Thanksgiving!
Comment by isthisakeeper— December 1, 2020 #
Wow, I would say that besides being charming, your fabulous-looking cake does “arty” very well. I do need to try crispy maple parsnip chips. My mom always used parsnips in her Christmas Eve vegetable soup but I never cooked with or used them. It was fun to re-visit a rather homely (but also charming in its own way). All of us seemed to be either alone (me) or just celebrating with partners or with her immediate family so I was intrigued how we all adapted to that. Very nice.
Comment by MARY H HIRSCH— December 8, 2020 #
Wow, I would say that besides being charming, your fabulous-looking cake does “arty” very well. I do need to try crispy maple parsnip chips. My mom always used parsnips in her Christmas Eve vegetable soup but I never cooked with or used them. It was fun to re-visit a rather homely (but also charming in its own way). All of us seemed to be either alone (me) or just celebrating with partners or with her immediate family so I was intrigued how we all adapted to that. Very nice.
Comment by Mary Hirsch— December 8, 2020 #
This sounds absolutely incredible!!!
Veg cakes rule!!
Miamii / https://explorewithmii.com/
Comment by Miamii Mansour— January 5, 2021 #
so true!! thanks for the comment!
Comment by steph (whisk/spoon)— January 5, 2021 #