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Climatarian Sticky Toffee Root Vegetable Pudding
22nd February 2024
This month, we found ourselves inspired to assemble a recipe for climatarian sticky toffee root vegetable pudding using parsnips that often overwinter in many British gardens. However, like many a climatarian flexible recipe, you could make this one with other root vegetables such as sweet potatoes, turnips, or carrots.
Big parsnips in the garden for Climatarian Vegetable Pudding
As soon as the sun shines in February, we start looking to refresh vegetable beds in eager anticipation of a spring planting season. Early in 2024, we found ourselves pulling up enormous parsnips that had overwintered in frosty Oxfordshire. Parsnips are so versatile you can roast them, puree them, or turn them into soup. But these ones were truly giants, so they inspired us to try a fast and simple seasonal winter pudding in which parsnips are the star.
Although they can be harvested as early as late summer, parsnips are sweetest when they overwinter in the cold ground. That makes them a seasonal staple for winter cooking in the UK. As the plants gear up to sprout new greens for the spring, starches in the roots begin to transform into sugars, making the February and March crops especially tender and sweet while retaining their distinctive, mildly nutty flavour. What’s more, parsnips add fibre and a hearty dose of potassium and vitamin C to this sticky, yummy treat that helps us keep away the winter blues.
You can treat this as a flexible recipe to help you maintain a climatarian diet using in-season produce year-round. If you prefer to make this pudding in late spring, summer, or fall, use carrots, sweet potatoes, or beets as a substitute for parsnips while retaining the pudding’s overall characteristics. You can also use virtually any dried fruits instead of dates. We recommend figs or end-of-season UK plums for a refreshing finish.
Yield: 8-10
Climatarian Sticky Toffee Root Vegetable Pudding
A classic pudding. Tasty, uses up seasonal root vegetables and adds fibre to your diet.
Prep time
30 mins
Cooking time
30 mins
Total time
1 hour
Ingredients
- 125g unsalted, room-temperature fat (butter, bakers block, lard)
- 150g pitted dates, roughly chopped
- ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
- Pinch of salt
- 200g dark muscovado or dark brown sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 2 tbsp treacle, golden syrup or molasses
- 200g self-raising flour
- 2 tbsp ground ginger (or fresh, see tips)
- 300g root vegetables (e.g. parsnips), peeled and coarsely grated
FOR THE SAUCE
- 200g unsalted butter
- 200g muscovado/dark brown sugar
- 300ml pot double cream
- 1 tbsp flaky sea salt
Instructions
- Heat oven to 170 C (160C fan).
- Butter and line the base of a 23cm square cake tin with baking/greaseproof paper.
- In a bowl, mix the dates and bicarb and then cover with boiling water and leave to sit for 10 mins to soften. Drain the mixture and then pulverise it to a rough paste in a food processor.
- Using an electric hand whisk or tabletop mixer, cream the butter with the sugar until golden and fluffy, then gradually beat in the eggs. Add a dusting of flour to prevent curdling. Add the date paste, flour, treacle, ginger, grated parsnips, and a pinch of salt. Mix to combine, and pour into the tin.
- Bake for ~30 mins. It’s ready when a skewer inserted into the centre comes out with only a few crumbs attached.
- Meanwhile, make the toffee sauce. Put the butter, sugar, and cream in a saucepan with 1 tsp flaky sea salt over a gentle heat. Cook, stirring, until the sugar has dissolved, the butter has melted, and the sauce has thickened and is toffee coloured. Remove the cake from the tin and slice. Serve topped with the sauce
Notes
If you have fresh ginger you’re at risk of wasting, you can preserve it in a simple syrup. You use equal parts sugar and water to the amount of ginger you have. For instance if you want to preserve 50g ginger, use 50ml water and 50g sugar for the syrup.
Peel and chop the ginger, and boil until soft (about 2 hours). Then remove the ginger to jars. Reserve the right amount of boiling liquid for your quantity of ginger (e.g. 50ml for 50g), and add your sugar to that, cooking until dissolved into a syrup. Pour the syrup over your ginger. This process makes your ginger last months and also means you have a handy, classic baking ingredient available to dress up recipes like this. You can always substitute the preserved ginger for ground ginger in recipes.
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