It’s January, so you may have recently resolved to eat a bit healthier. If you’re like me, it’s a constant battle to get your little ones to put a vegetable into their bodies. Doing away with treats is just not going to fly in my house, for either the adults or the kids. My solution? Throw some veggies into our desserts! If you’re going to have sweets, you might as well add a few nutrients! Pumpkin pie, carrot cake, and zucchini bread are well-known treats that also contain veggies. Here are a few less common ways to add veggies to your sweets this winter.
Carrots
This is about the time of year when we wind up with more carrots from our winter CSA than we could possibly eat. I’ll be trying this carrot pie with a pecan crust as a tasty way to whittle down my backlog.
When I want to try something a little more exotic, I’ll make gajar ka halwa (Indian carrot pudding). The combination of cardamom, nuts, milk, and sugar sounds just right for a chilly winter day!
Parsnips
Parsnips are so similar to carrots that it’s a no-brainer that they could also go into a dessert. This spiced parsnip cake is a twofer — it has parsnips AND butternut squash. Might as well just serve it for dinner!
These coconut parsnip clusters from celebrity chef Rocco DiSpirito are intended to replicate coconut macaroons, but without as much of the fat and calories.
Eggplant
I made these chocolate eggplant cakes for a recent holiday. They’re rich, chocolatey, and not too sweet. The eggplant replaces the butter/oil, so you might even call them healthy. While adults may like them a bit more than kids for those reasons, my 5-year-old certainly didn’t turn one down!
Beets
Valentine’s Day is coming up, so if you’re planning to bake for your loves, might I suggest this chocolate beet cake with beet cream cheese frosting? The pink frosting makes it so very seasonally appropriate.
Beets and chocolate go together like a hand and a glove, or like Burt and Ernie. Slip some extra nutrients into your next batch of brownies with these dark chocolate beet brownies. You’ll wonder why you’ve never thought of it before.
Green things
This was a tough one, but again, chocolate comes to the rescue. If you happen to have four ripe avocados just sitting around and don’t want to make guacamole, try chocolate avocado mousse instead.
Use spinach in a chocolate peanut butter green smoothie. This is a quick and easy recipe for energy if you’re a new mom, or a reasonably healthy one for the kiddos in your life.
Corn
While not exactly in season at the moment, there are some great desserts out there with corn. Like this sweet corn ice cream with blackberry verbena sauce that just screams “summer!”
Or if you’ve been dying to get out that kitchen blowtorch that you’ve used exactly never, sweet corn creme brûlée will give you a great reason!
Now let’s get cooking! If you make any of these recipes, please comment and tell us how they turned out!
