Vegetables in your sweets

As the summers fresh harvest is drawing to a close, you might find that if your plants survived the heat, you are overloaded with vegetables like zucchini.  Zucchini is one of those vegetables that's very versatile, but let's face it, we get sick of eating it all the time.

Thankfully, some creative mother ages ago (back in the medieval times to be exact) came up with a great way to disguise vegetables in layers of sugar and spice.  The real story is that during medieval times, sweeteners were expensive and scarce, so in order to make a sweet bread, they used carrots, which is the vegetable with the highest amount of natural sugar after sugar beets.  This is how carrot cake was born.

Although it's called carrot cake, it's actually a misnomer. Carrot cake, like zucchini bread, is a quick bread, which means it's a bread made with a chemical leavener, such as baking powder or baking soda, instead of yeast. In making quick breads, you mix all your wet ingredients together and then all your dry ingredients together. You add the wet to the dry and allow it to mix for several minutes.

Beyond carrot cake, zucchini cake, zucchini bread, muffins, and scones are just a few ways to blend the wholesome goodness of summer vegetables into the folds of deliciously sweet goodies made for early fall eating.  In August's Bon Appetit magazine, you can find a great recipe for a zucchini pecan cake to get you ready for fall flavors like cinnamon and nutmeg.

Here are some other great recipes for some vegetables-masquerading-as-sweets concoctions:

Carrot Cake with Maple Cream Cheese Icing:  I would add 1 cup of raisins or crushed pineapple to this recipe to make it a little bit more moist.
Sweet Potato & Zucchini Bread:  A slightly more interesting version of plain old zucchini bread.
Carrot Muffins:  Made with a little bit of whole wheat flour!
Carrot Ginger Scones:  My recipe- a little bit of a twist on a popular ginger scone.

Around Pittsburgh, there are some amazing choices for carrot cake.  Nearly every bakery in town has carrot cake or a carrot cake cupcake.  The Pie Place, Bethel Bakery, Priory Not-So-Fine Pastries, Vanilla Pastry Studio, Oakmont Bakery, etc.  Carrot cake has a nice place that sits between a traditional german style bakery and a newer, specialty bakery, so you are apt to find it many places.  My favorite so far is the Whole Foods Market carrot cake, with the Pie Place's coming in close second.

Summer is coming to a fast close, with that 60 degree weather right around the corner, so get your veggies now, just hide them in a cake!

Whole Foods Market Carrot Cake on the Sugar Love Scale:
Taste ♥♥♥♥
Texture ♥♥♥♥
Appearance ♥♥♥
Overall ♥♥♥.75

Grilled salmon and black bean biscuits.

Unlike Carmelo's in Tuscaloosa, I swear it can be done!  And they are pretty delicious, I must say.

Ingredients:
3/4 cup + 2 Tbsp COLD butter
 1 cup Whole wheat flour
1 cup AP flour
1 cup Cake flour
1 Tbsp Baking powder
3/4 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Baking soda
2 tsp Fresh minced cilantro
2 tsp Fresh ground black pepper
1/2 cup Shredded grilled salmon or smoked salmon
1/2 cup Drained, rinsed black beans from a can
1 cup Buttermilk or soured milk (milk + 2 tsp apple cider vinegar)
1 cup Shredded smoked gruyere or gouda

Method:

1.  Cube butter, place in 3/4 cup in freezer.  Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.  Mix all the dry ingredients together in the bowl of a stand mixer or food processor.

2.  Add 3/4 cup of butter and mix on low with paddle attachment of stand mixer until crumbly or blend in food processor until crumbly.  Carefully mix in shredded salmon and beans.

3.  SLOWLY add milk to mixture while the mixer runs on low.  Add a little at a time until the dough forms solid ball.  Do not add all the milk at once or your biscuits will never work!

4.  Form the dough into a disk using your hands, adding buttermilk if necessary.  If time allows, let dough rest for 20 minutes in the refrigerator, covered.   On a well floured, clean surface, knead dough about 20 times.  Pat or roll dough out to 1-in thickness.  Using black bean can or biscuit cutter, cut out biscuits and place on baking sheet.  Reroll scraps and repeat until all dough is used.

5.  Brush tops of biscuits with remaining buttermilk if desired and dot with remaining 2 Tbsp of butter.  Place on baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake for 10 minutes.  At 10 minutes, add the shredded cheese to the tops of the biscuits and bake for 5 more minutes.  Remove from oven, cool on wire rack.

Now the key to this recipe is what you serve these biscuits with.  They taste good alone, but they taste great when served with a "gravy" masquerading as a corn chowder.  Try this recipe from Ina Garten at Food Network, but swap out the cheddar for more of that smoke gruyere or gouda to blend the flavors better!
 

Carrot Ginger Scones

Scones are super easy to make and taste so much better when they are fresh from the oven!  Serve this with a pumpkin spiced latte for a great breakfast treat!

Ingredients:

2 1/4 cups AP Flour

1/3 cup Brown sugar

1 Tbsp Baking powder

1 tsp Cinnamon

1 tsp Lemon zest

1/2 cup Freshly grated carrot

12 Tbsp Unsalted COLD butter, cut into cubes (cut it up and put it in the freezer if you'd like)

2/3 cup Finely, evenly, chopped candied ginger

1/2 cup Heavy cream + extra for brushing tops of scones

1/4 cup Reconstituted bacon fat (or, if you don't have this, just increase to 3/4 cup cream)

Method: 

1.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.  Sift together flour, sugar, cinnamon and baking powder in large bowl. Mix in lemon zest and carrot. 

2.  Cut in butter cubes until mixture is crumbly and all the butter is well coated. 

(Or, to make steps 1 & 2 really simple,  place the first 5 ingredients in a food processor and pulse until well mixed.  Add in butter, pulse until mixture is crumbly and fine).  

3.  Mix in chopped ginger.  Make a well in the center and pour in cream and bacon fat.  Using hands, blend the wet and dry ingredients until a solid ball of dough forms.  Knead 15 times.  If you have time, place in refrigerator for 1 hour to allow dough to rest and flavors to combine.  

4.  Form 3 in balls and place on baking sheet lined with parchment.  You should get 8 scones out of this batch.  Brush tops with cream and bake on 400 degrees for 12-15 minutes.