The Beet Goes On

I'm still here.

Here's something. Beet Cake. I suddenly have developed an obsession with making cakes that call for obscure, disagreeable, or old-fashioned fruits and vegetables. Yesterday I made Beet Cake, or, more exotically, Gateau aux Betteraves. I beg you, make this in a tube pan and not the shrimpy 9-inch cake pan it calls for, unless you love cleaning ovens. It was quite good, although it's one of those things that are Better the Second Day. The children didn't touch it, so my plan to give them vegetables unawares failed. The churchgoers will eat it at church fellowship hour. They eat anything there.

(I decorated the beet cake with crystallized ginger bits from Trader Joe's. They could be baked into the cake too.)

Next: Parsnip Cake. We have a gargantuan parsnip as big as my arm in the cellar that must be wrestled onto the kitchen counter and mutilated in the food processor soon, or it will eat the cats, who spend every night in the same room as the parsnip. That must be why the cats have been thin and nervous lately.