Celeriac Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

I have a few favorite recipes that I turn to again and again. For the Fall and Winter holidays this Parsnip Cake is a favorite, it has a great texture and keeps for several days. It can be made a day or two ahead and it’s just fine, maybe better. The slight vegetal flavor and spice are just what I want in a fall dessert. For a couple years now our parsnip crops have failed for one reason or another so I haven’t made Parsnip Cake for at least a couple years. I was planning my Thanksgiving menu wishing we had some parsnips for the cake, and a light bulb went off….parsnips and celeriac are ‘related’ (Apiaceae family).

I love celeriac and had celeriac, I wanted to make the Parsnip Cake and didn’t have any parsnips, so…I used my recipe for parsnip cake and subbed equal amounts of celeriac for parsnips and voila.

After successfully subbing celeriac for parsnips I’m confident you could use any carrot cake recipe you like and sub parsnips, celeriac, beets or even rutabagas and be happy with the results. Some vegetables might be more pronounced but I’m sure all will be delicious. I like this recipe because it uses melted butter instead of oil giving the cake a nice refined texture, not heavy and oily like most carrot cakes.

There is a pretty good amount of celeriac, you can see here in the batter before it’s baked. There is some apple in there too to add to the moisture level and give it a tart sweetness.

The cakes bake nice and even and are easy to handle.

Recipe Celeriac Cake

12 tablespoons of butter
250gm turbinado sugar (can sub raw sugar or brown sugar)
100gm maple syrup
3 eggs
250gm all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 tsp all spice
250gm grated celeriac
1 apple grated (I didn’t peel it)
50gm chopped nuts
zest and juice of one small orange (I used a mandarin)

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350F and grease two 8 inch cake pans. I also put parchment in the bottom of the pans. I do this out of habit. I don’t know if you need to do this step or not. I always do so I mention it here.
Melt the butter, sugar and maple syrup in a pan, let it cool a little
I used a hand mixer to add the eggs to the butter and syrup mixture
Add the flour, baking powder/soda/salt to the above
Add grated celeriac and apple, pecans, orange zest and juice to the above and mix
Divide the batter between the two pans and bake for 45-50 minutes or so until they are firm to the touch (in the middle) and brown. They will just start to pull away from the side of the pan when they are done.
When the cakes are done cool them before removing from the pans. I had to run a knife around the sides of the pan to release the cakes.

I made a basic cream cheese frosting for this cake. For the Parsnip cake I make a mascarpone filling. Both are delicious and could use either, or you could just dust it with some powdered sugar.

Let me know if you try this. I think you will really love it.