Editor’s note: For our final Iron Chef dish, the amazing A has agreed to be a guest author on our blog (she is a writer and a chef, so I can assure you it will be a much better post than the unfortunate… thing written by Mr. Har last week). You can find more about her, her husband N, and their son N’ here and here. The only other comment I’ll make is that these cupcakes were amazing, and my personal favourite of the evening. Enjoy! ~D

When searching for dessert recipes that involved parsnips and persimmons, it became clear that our options were limited: we could make a pie or a cake. While neither of us had made a cake from scratch, it seemed preferable to stewing parsnips for pie.

The next step was to determine our ratio of parsnips and persimmons. A trial run convinced us that we could make a cake from scratch, but also that out of the three batches we concocted, we preferred the 2:1 parsnip/persimmon ratio. The juicy persimmons made the cake super moist, and the parsnips gave it texture comparable to carrot cake. Our trial also revealed that the cupcakes are super tasty when served warm.

And we made cupcakes rather than a sheet cake because 1) they seemed easier, 2) we had better ideas on how to frost and garnish them, and 3) we wouldn’t have to worry about the cake looking ugly when it was sliced.

Also, Nathan would like me to mention that I was mean and gave him mean tasks, including the manual shredding of the parsnips (which was admittedly patience-testing and difficult) and the grinding of the whole allspice since I couldn’t find the ground version at the store. The grinding involved a baby food jar and a hammer since we are classy like that.

Here’s our recipe, modified from The Crisper Whisperer: (http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/03/the-crisper-whisperer-parsnip-spice-cake-recipe.html)

The cupcakes:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon ground allspice
3/4 teaspoon ground cloves
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs
1/2 cup veggie oil
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/3 tightly packed cups of peeled, shredded parsnips
2/3 cups of blended persimmons

The frosting:
4 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
2 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
milk (we added a bit to thin out the frosting, but feel free to omit if you like the consistency)

The garnish:
extra shredded parsnips
persimmon puree (though if I did this again, I would cook it down and maybe add a bit of sugar to it to make a thicker, sweeter mix)

1.      Preheat oven to 340 and line two muffin pans with 18 cupcakes liners.

2.      In one bowl, combine and mix dry ingredients. In a second bowl, combine and mix wet ingredients, leaving the parsnips and persimmons to the side.

3.      Pour wet ingredients over dry and mix until blended. Add the parsnips and persimmons, and your batter is ready to go.

4.      We filled the cupcakes liners so that they had about a half inch from the top, which gave us an average of 17 cupcakes each time. Cook for 20-25 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.

5.      While the cupcakes are baking, mix up the ingredients for your frosting. We threw the cream cheese and butter into our mixer and let them get to know each other quite well before we introduced the remaining ingredients. Again, the milk is your choice, depending on how thick you like your frosting.

6.      Frost, garnish, serve, enjoy!