Parsnip Winter Cake

Parsnips and honey pair together wonderfully, and if you can lift parsnips from your garden to make it, all the better. Local honey is recommended for the deep flavour and sweetness (we’ve run out of ours from the summer season, but there are some terrific local artisan honeys about, such as Nook Farm – seek them out in the farm shop).

Grease and line a deep, round cake tin, 20cm/8in diameter

INGREDIENTS

 150g/5oz Organic Herd unsalted butter

 150g/5oz light muscovado sugar

4 Docker Farm eggs

250g/8oz peeled parsnips, coarsely grated

 100g/3½oz sultanas

 50g/2oz chopped candied peel

 200g/7oz Eden Yard plain flour

 90g/3oz ground almonds

1 tsp ground ginger

½ tbsp baking powder

2 tbsp Lake District honey

METHOD

• Preheat the oven to 160°C/325°F/gas mark 3. Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, then beat in the eggs.

• Stir in the parsnips, sultanas and candied peel (by hand or on a slow speed in a stand mixer).

• Sift in the flour, ground almonds, ground ginger and baking powder. Fold in by hand until everything is incorporated, then pour into the prepared tin and smooth level.

• Bake for around 1¼ hours, until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Remove from the oven and put the cake (still in the tin) on a cooling rack.

• Pierce about 12 holes in the cake, all the way to the base, with a skewer, and drizzle the honey over the top.

Allow the cake to cool completely in the tin, before turning out.

Serve with a hot cup of tea after a long walk on a cold day.

This inviting winter bake is from Grow Your Own Cake: Recipes from Plot to Plate by Holly Farrell. If you are creating a planting scheme around produce you can cook and bake with, this is the book for you. Available in the farm shop.