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

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.