Fed up with parsnips in your veg box? I have the solution.

[Spidermama]

Parnip Bread.

This is a nice, sweet, moist tea bread which actually makes parsnips taste nice. Kids like it and there's no reason to reveal to them that this 'cake' contains vegetables.

I've got a parsnip backlog so will be making three loaves and freezing some this evening.

So ...

10 oz plain flour
2 tspns of bicarb
pinch salt
1 tspn ground mixed spice
1 tspn ginger
8oz caster sugar
3 eggs (room temp)
8oz butter (melted)
2 tspsns vanilla ess
8oz parsnips, grated.

1. Heat oven 170'C (gas 3). Grease a 2lb loaf tin and line base with parchment. (I have also made this as a sandwich cake in ordinary sandwich tins. The 5 year old party guests wolfed it down.)

1. sift flour, bicarb, salt and spices together in large mising bowl. Add sugar.

1. Whisk eggs lightly with butter and vanilla ess'.

1. Make a well in dry ingreds, add egg mixture and mix in carefully. Beat well then stir in grated parsnips. Mix thouroughly. Put in prepared tins.

1. Bake in thge top of the overn for 1.5 - 2 hours or until top springs back when pressed lightly with fingertip.

1. Let it cool for five mins before taking out of the tin. Put on a wire cooling rack and let it cool completely.

This is really nice. Honest.
Along the same lines there's also Beetroot and parsnip loaf, beatroot muffins and beetroot and carrot cake.

Oooh, looks good.

I'd be curious about the beetroot recipoes, I struggle with beetroot.

Oh, and I can point you at a courgette and lemon cake that is lucious. And an orange and pumpkin (squash works) cake that's very tasty indeed, although there's a lot of roasting and sieving involved.

Great inspiration for using up those nasty sweet winter veg.

As for the beetroot one it's an ordinary muffin mix but you first stew the beetroots til they're puree then stir them through the muffin mix. It makes nice dark pink cakes and, as with the others, no-one needs to know there are vegetables in them.

Oh spidermama, what a brilliant way of getting 6 yer old girls to eat veg

[shoock] lostinfrance.
(Wonders how the ridgy bits on parsnips might feel. Mud would have to be removed natch. )

whats all this 'no-one need know' stuff about?? mine will be in and out the kitchen and getting heavily involved in any cake making i try round here...

oh. maybe yours are at school or something? never thought of that...

I don't suppose it works with kohlrabi or fennel...?

I'd swap you for the parsnips, really I would.

do you really not like parsnips. Roast parsnips are my favourite veg of all time. The kids were quite impressed with them also when I used Nigella's idea and roasted them in maple syrup. Although DD (2) is very fond of just plain roasted parsnips eaten with the fingers like chips.

I read a recipe for spicy parsnip crisps on a calendar. You slice parsnip very thinly with vegetable peeler. Toss in olive oil, sprinkle with paprika and roast in the oven. Lovely to dip into something like a sour cream and chive dip I bet.

Personally, I can't stand parsnips. They actually don't have a lot of nutritional value, their glycaemic index is 100, the same as pure sugar, iirc.

But they do come in our veg box.

Actually, I made soup with parsnips, jerusalem artichokes, and broccoli this week, and it went down very well. DS1 asked me to make soup again this weekend.

How could anyone get fd up with parsnips? They are nectar from heaven!

Ah dg glad to see someone is in agreeement with me. nqc I wonder if teh gi of 100, the same as sugar, is why I like them quite so much.

I'm a big roast parsnip fan but this would be nice to make with little ones. We're going to Center Parcs in Feb so will make this and Banana Loaf to take along.

I'm full of admiration at your use of jerusalem artichokes, I have never eaten anything so horrid and I'm sure they'll be in veg box soon. is the soup really, really nice?

I made a beetroot cake, but I found the beetroot taste too strong and offputting. Odd, cos I love beetroot normally, but in the cake I made, it just wasn't right. I'd be interested to know what your cake's like, Spider!

rosted beetroot is lovely,doesn't take long ,just slice into 8 peices and roast for 30mins.

Apparently they make nice crisps like the parsnip one posted below.s

I got jerusalem artichokes this week,haven't used them yet,I thought they were potatoes

I don't mind the taste of jerusalem artichokes. I do latkes with jerusalem articokes and a range of other root veg, too.

The soup was very tasty - veg soup with root veg always works well.

ggirl - we get riverford boxes , and I too thought they were potatoes. WEll I lie, I thought they were nobbly mushrooms until I felt them and decided they were potatoes

Nqc, could you possibly share your recipe, please?

Incidentally I'm doing a pizza with them, but I'm sure they'll arrive again!

Parsnip crisps are yummy.
Dunno how to make them, but I like them, and beetroot ones.

Parsnip crisps are yummy

Surely to make them you just slice some parsnips really thin - maybe using a wide potato peeler or right attachment in a food processor, and then bake them in the oven drissled with a touch of oil. Neve rtried, but must be surely??? Might try next time to see!

Yes - inspired by dances's calendar I made parsnip crips and they were wonderful. HOWEVER some tips:

• use a magimix slicer. If you use a veg peeler you will get a heap of tiny shards, featuring fingernail bits;

• paprika is otiose. Olive oil & salt will do fine;

• they take AGES to bake, and need lots of stirring about (that may be to do with the tiny-shard-ness, however);

• the quite significant heap of shards that took you 25 mins to slice ends up about enough to decorate a saucer and is eaten when your back is turned.

having to use up surplus veg is exactly the kind of thing that puts me off having a veg box...i'm far too much of a control freak for someone else to decide what we'll eat that week