Daring Bakers - White chocolate and parsnip cake

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At the third attempt, my white chocolate and parsnip cake has finally left the oven in an edible version. Yes ! I think it might need a bit more tweaking as it still came out slightly too moist, but after my many failed vegetable cakes, you won't hear me complaining (too much).

The original recipe of the parsnip cake came from the book Les insolites de Julie byJulie Andrieu, that I bought in view of the Daring Bakers Hidden Veggies Challenge.  I meant to post this recipe for the challenge but none of my try-outs yielded a good cake by the due date, so I had to postpone it to a later date.

Because I couldn't get an adequate result while sticking to her recipe, I will be posting the adapted version that worked for me. 

Ingredients :

* 130 g soft butter
* 130 g sucre vergeoise blond -> brown sugar made from sugar beets (see here)
* 6 cl orange juice
* 300 g grated parsnip
* 125 g white chocolate, chopped
* 200 g all purpose flour
* 1 tsp baking soda
* 2 tsps cream of tartar
* 1 tsp cinnamon
* 0.5 tsp ground nutmeg

Preparation :

In a mixing bowl, blend the soft butter with the sugar until it withens.

I steamed the shredded parsnip, because I thought it might release extra moisture this way. Parsnip being a raher dry vegetable though, there wasn't a substantial difference between the raw and the cooked parsnip.  You could therefore use raw parsnip for this recipe.

Add the grated parsnip and orange juice to the sugar/butter blend and mix all the ingredients together.

In a second bowl, mix the all purpose flour with the cinnamon, nutmeg, cream of tartar and baking soda.

Add the first preparation gradually to the flour, stirring all along and at the end, mix in the chopped chocolate.

Pour the dough into a previously greased and floured mould and bake for approximately 50 minutes in a preheated oven at 170C.