By Claire Lassam

A few years back, my Mom stopped making Christmas pudding. Nobody ate it, nobody liked it; it was time to give up the tradition and do something else. No one was upset.

But at our table filled with local sweet potatoes, a brined heritage turkey, and homemade cranberry sauce, it was hard to find a dessert that lived up to the locavore mentality. With such a fleeting season for fruit in BC, it’s not easy to resist the Florida strawberries in December.

On your way to the freezer for some frozen blueberries, don’t be so quick to walk past the vegetable aisle. Before you gasp and turn away, may I remind you of carrot cake, that childhood favourite smothered with cream cheese icing. Hard to believe its main ingredient is a root vegetable.

It’s not an obvious choice perhaps, but with a little love, a little work, and a little time, a simple tuber can become a very elegant dessert. Baking with vegetables is nothing new; if the Internet is to be believed, sweet potato pie has been around since the English colonialists first came to America, tomato* soup cupcakes were a 50s staple, and Maida Heatter (“the Julia Child of cakes”) swears by a Russian chocolate cake with sauerkraut in it—although I’ve yet to try that one.

But it makes perfect sense. Root veggies are easy to store, easy to bake, quite sweet, and have a starchy quality that just means you use a little less flour. I’d tell you that they’re also high in protein, antioxidants, and vitamin A, but that might give you the misconception that they’re not delicious.

And they are. The salted-caramel pumpkin mousse is light in texture but complex in flavour, with the mascarpone and the salt lightening the sweetness of the vanilla and the caramel. The maple sweet potato cake is dense and soft and seductively moist. And the red velvet cake is so light, so fluffy, and so chocolatey that no one will ever know it contains something as high in vitamins B4, B5, and B6 as a beet. They’ll just be licking the cream cheese icing off the backs of their forks, wondering if you’ll give them the recipe. All of the recipes below use pureed vegetables. To make them I simply roasted them in their skins at 350°F until they were very soft, about an hour. Then I let them cool, peeled them, and puréed them in a food processor.

SALTED-CARAMEL PUMPKIN MOUSSE

CARAMEL SAUCE:

• 1/2 cup (125mL) sugar
• 2 Tbsp (30mL) boiling water
• 1 Tbsp (15mL) cold butter
• 1/4 cup (60mL) whipping cream
• 1 tsp (5mL) vanilla

MOUSSE:

• 1 tsp (5mL) gelatin
• 2 Tbsp (30mL) icing sugar
• 1 1/2 cup (60mL) mascarpone
• 1 cups (375mL) whipping cream
• 1 Tbsp (15mL) vanilla
• 3/4 cup (175mL) pumpkin purée
• 1/2 cup (125mL) caramel sauce
• 1 tsp (5mL) cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp (2mL) nutmeg
• 3/4 tsp (4mL) salt

MAKE CARAMEL SAUCE:

Caramel burns quickly, so make sure you have all your ingredients ready and measured before you start.

Put sugar in a pot on medium heat with just enough water to barely wet it. Stir until the sugar dissolves, then remove the spoon and turn up heat to high. Carefully let it boil until it turns a nice auburn colour.

Immediately take it off the heat and add the boiling water. It will spit and bubble and hiss; don’t be alarmed, but do keep your fingers away, and be careful.

Stir to make sure the caramel hasn’t seized and turned lumpy. If it has, just put it back on the heat for a minute and stir until it’s smooth again.

Add the butter, then the cream, then the vanilla, stirring between each addition.

Pour into a heat-safe container and cool completely before using.

MAKE MOUSSE:

Pour gelatin into a small bowl and pour 1 Tbsp (15mL) cold water over it.

In a separate bowl, whip together the icing sugar, mascarpone, cream, and vanilla until soft peaks form. Set aside in the fridge.

In yet another bowl, mix the pumpkin, the cup of caramel sauce, the spices, and the salt.

Put the bowl with the gelatin in the microwave for about 15 seconds, or until the gelatin has completely dissolved. (Or dissolve gelatin in the top of a double boiler.)

Mix the gelatin into the pumpkin-caramel mixture, and then gently fold in the whipped cream mixture until barely combined.

Immediately put this into the fridge to set, about 1 hour.

Once it has set, put the mousse into a piping bag and pipe it into bowls or glasses. Then drizzle the remaining caramel on top and sprinkle with some more salt, if you wish.

RED (BEET) VELVET CAKE

• 1 3/4 cups (425mL) all purpose flour
• 1/3 cup (75mL) cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 tsp (7mL) baking soda
• 1/2 tsp (2mL) salt
• 1 cup (250mL) butter, room temperature
• 3/4 cup (175mL) white sugar
• 3/4 cup (175mL) brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup (175mL) beets, puréed
• 1 Tbsp (15mL) vanilla
• 3/4 cup (175mL) buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 350°F, and butter and flour two 8-inch round pans.

Sift together all the dry ingredients into a bowl.

In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well and scraping down the sides of the bowl between each addition. Add the beets and vanilla.

With the mixer on low speed, alternate adding the dry ingredients and the buttermilk, starting and finishing with the dry.

Pour mixture into pans, and bake until an inserted skewer comes out with only a few moist crumbs, about 30 minutes. Cool completely, and ice with cream cheese icing.

CREAM CHEESE ICING

• 8oz (250g) cream cheese, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup (125mL) butter, at room temperature
• 2 cups (500mL) icing sugar

Beat together cream cheese and butter. Add icing sugar.

SWEET POTATO MAPLE CAKE

I served this with whipped cream and some more maple syrup drizzled on top. Wonderful!

• 1/2 cup (125mL) butter at room temperature
• 3/4 cup (175mL) maple syrup
• 3/4 cup (175mL) brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup (250mL) yams (orange sweet potatoes), puréed**
• 1 3/4 cup (125mL) buttermilk
• 1 tsp (5mL) vanilla
• 1 cups (425mL) all purpose flour
• 1 tsp (5mL) baking soda
• 1/2 tsp (2mL) salt
• 1 tsp (5mL) cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour a bundt pan.

Cream together butter, maple syrup, and sugar. Add the eggs and combine. Add the yams, then the buttermilk, and vanilla, stirring between each addition.

Mix dry ingredients. Add to batter, stirring until just combined. Pour into prepared pan.

Bake until an inserted skewer comes out with only a few moist crumbs, about 30 minutes.

Claire Lassam is a professional baker and writes about baking with local produce at justsomethingpretty.tumblr.com

* We know tomato is technically a fruit, but it is most often used like a vegetable, so we’re bending the rules and pretending it belongs in this story.

** What we most often call yams in North America are actually a type of sweet potato. True yams are white and stringy, and not what we intend for this recipe. —Editor