Parsnip Cake With Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting
For cake
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2 large eggs, at room temperature
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3/4 cup/165g/5.8ozs brown sugar
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3/4 cup/185ml/6.511 flozs mild flavoured oil
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2.5 cups firmly packed grated parsnip (2-3 large parsnips, I got about 3 cup's worth from 3 parsnips)
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1/2 cup/80g/3ozs sultanas (I used dried blueberries)
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1/2 cup/80g/3ozs coarsely chopped walnuts
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1 cup/150g/5ozs plain all purpose flour
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pinch of salt
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2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
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1 teaspoon baking powder
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1 teaspoon baking soda (bi carb of soda)
Cream cheese frosting
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250g/1/2 pound light cream cheese, at room temperature
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1/2 cup/80g/3ozs icing sugar, sifted
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finely grated zest and juice of a small lemon
Step 1 - To make cake, preheate oven to 180C/350F. Line the base and sides of a 20x20cm square cake tin with parchment paper.
Step 2 - Place eggs, sugar and oil in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a beater attachment and beat for 2 minutes until the sugar dissolves and you get a yellow, syrupy consistency. Stir in grated parsnip, sultanas and walnuts. Then add flour, salt, cinnamon, baking powder and soda and stir to combine. Spread into the prepared tin and bake for 30-35 minutes until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Cool completely and then remove from tin.
Step 3 - Make cream cheese icing by beating the cream cheese in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a beater attachment. Beat until smooth. Add the icing sugar, lemon zest and juice and continue beating until smooth and creamy. Spread over cooled cake. Iced, this cake can keep in the fridge for several days in an airtight container or at room temperature if it is uniced.
Review of Tefal Fresh Express $89.95
This is the second Tefal item I've tried and like the first, I am quite mixed in my experience of it. The Fresh Express seems to work better for some foods than others. It is like the girl with the curl - when it works well it works really well but when it doesn't the result is quite horrid. It is essentially like having a motorised version of a four sided box grater but without much risk of losing knuckle skin-which always seems to happen to me. Nevertheless, it makes me look forward to making my favourite Vietnamese chicken salad which requires so much grating that I only used to make it when Mr NQN would volunteer to do the grating.
Pros:
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Good for grating "dry" items like carrots, parsnips and potatoes
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Fast at making salads and items like roesti
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Can also grate chocolate and slice vegetables with the five grater attachments (although longer carrots strips can't be done)
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Can grate more of an item than a regular food processor-the parsnip pieces below weren't grated by a regular food processor whereas they were with this
Pieces of parsnip that the food processor left behind on the blade that were able to be grated with the Fresh Express
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You won't lose any knuckle skin-my Microplane is great except the one with the large holes which I use to grate hard items like carrots
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Easy to clean
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Relatively small benchtop space
Cons:
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Not good for items with a high water content as they can become mushy. I tried a few different items like green onions and cucumber and it became clogged and mushy and the grater part was very hard to remove
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Blades don't feel particularly sharp
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Has a narrow cavity- a carrot and cucumber can fit but a parsnip had to be cut in half
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Food can get stuck in between the grater and the holder
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Graters can be a little hard to take out-there is nothing to grip onto
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Disperses food quite wide-you will need a large, shallow bowl or it may fly all over the benchtop depending on what you are grating
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The on button needs to be constantly pushed down to work which is annoying as you have to push down on the pusher tool too
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Takes up more bench and cupboard space than a grater