What is more fun than a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting? A carrot cake with cream cheese frosting that is also rainbow.

Ok, a confession. It’s not all carrot. Other underground veges lend a helping hand: beetroot and parsnip to be precise. Then cream cheese frosting links them all together. Meet the Beetroot Carrot Parsnip Layer Cake.

Right, you might say, I’ve heard of carrot cake and I’ve heard of beetroot cake (or at least chocolate cake with beetroot in it), but parsnip? At least one of my friends was thoroughly unconvinced that parsnip cake could be a thing. But it is a thing, as I independently verified on the interwebs – even if that recipe did have pineapple in it. So all I really needed to do was to go to the market for nice fresh ingredients and get grating!

Boy I hate grating beetroot. It splatters little red dots of juice everywhere not to mention making your chopping board pink. Also, making a beetroot cake which is actually pink at the end of the baking process has been somewhat of a bane of my existence: I spent weeks a few years ago working on a naturally coloured beetroot red velvet cake, and on the batch after I finally succeeded (using beetroot juice and chaff), a beet broke my juicer and it splattered red chaff the length of my house (one vote against an open plan kitchen). As you might imagine, the stress of it all resulted in me promptly wiping the recipe from my mind. The next time I went to make a beetroot red velvet cake (back in Cupcake A Day May), the cakes went into the oven pink and came out caramel coloured. Turns out beetroot pigment is not only heat sensitive, but also pH sensitive (yup, that chemistry degree is paying off!). So low baking times and an acidic mixture are called for. I think I can finally say: nailed it.

The hardest thing about this cake is figuring out what to call it! I kind of like BCP Cake, though it sounds like an mining consortium. “Root Vegetable Cake” just sounds terrible. I’m also bound by the horrible SEO rules which mean that I have to have a keyword which gets repeated in the text… so it has to be descriptive if anyone interested in rainbow root cakes (see, another disaster of a name) is likely to find it. I guess boring old Beetroot Carrot Parsnip Layer Cake will have to do.

Anyway, so what if it has a daggy name? It’s just so pretty. That’s really the only reason I made it: because it would look gorgeous – and boy does it ever! Success. Oh and btw, it tastes pretty great too: wholesome and luxurious at the same time.

Beetroot Carrot Parsnip Layer Cake

You will need 3 x 18 cm cake tins for this recipe. (You can also use one tin and bake all the layers separately, just don’t mix in your grated vegetables into the basic mixture until just before you bake).

Beetroot Carrot and Parsnip Cakes

ingredients

4 eggs
3/4 cups melted butter
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 heaped tsp mixed spice
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional – the cakes in the photos don’t have walnuts but normally I would use them)
1 cup grated parsnip (about 150g, firmly packed)
1 cup grated beetroot (about 150g, firmly packed)
1 cup grated carrot (about 150g, firmly packed)
1 2/3 cups brown sugar, divided into 2 x 2/3 cup portions and 1 x 1/3 cup portion
1/3 cup white sugar
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
2 tbsp flour, extra

mixing

Prepare your 18cm cake tins by lining with bake paper.

Mix the eggs, butter, vanilla, flour, baking powder, mixed spice and walnuts (if using) in a bowl until just combined. Divide mixture into three even portions in separate bowls. Add a 2/3 cup portion of brown sugar to each of two of the bowls, and in the third bowl, add the 1/3 cup portion of brown sugar and the 1/3 cup of white sugar. Don’t mix in just yet!

Add the grated parsnip to the brown sugar/white sugar bowl and mix until just combined.

Toss the grated beetroot in the apple cider vinegar. Add to one of the brown sugar bowls along with the extra flour and mix until just combined.

Add the grated carrot to the final brown sugar bowl and mix until just combined.

Spoon each mixture into a prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the middle of each cake comes out clean (if you are baking all the layers together you might need an extra 5-10 minutes). Let the cakes cool on a wire rack, then refrigerate the cakes until cold.

Layer the cold cakes with about 1/5 of frosting for each layer. Spread half the remaining frosting around the sides. You may need to pop the cake in the fridge between layering and covering the sides: cream cheese frosting is quite temperature sensitive.

 

Pipe or spread the last portion of frosting over the top of the cake. Decorate as desired (I used chocolate coated rice crispies – available in some Australian supermarkets). To get the scattered effect on the sides, you actually just throw the little balls at the sides of the cake!

Cream Cheese Frosting

ingredients

350g cream cheese (very soft)
125g unsalted, cultured butter (very soft)
225g icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla

mixing

Beat butter and cream cheese until very smooth, beat in icing sugar and vanilla; beat about 4 minutes. Refrigerate until it begins to firm up then whip briefly to homogenise.

How perfectly gorgeous. 

Enjoy!xxx