Turnip and cranberry sheet cake with cream cheese icing

When I say turnip here, I mean the large root vegetable with purplish skin and yellow flesh. In some places it is called a rutabaga (meaning baggy root) and in England it is called a swede (from Swedish turnip) - probably because it was first documented by a Swiss botanist who observed it growing wild in Sweden.

This is what I grew up calling a turnip and was what we often carved at Halloween when I was very young - before pumpkins were widely available in Ireland. Because turnips were indeed the original jack o’lanterns. Carving turnips into heads and placing a candle inside to spook other people for fun or to frighten away any spirits or faeries with nefarious intentions around Samhain (Celtic Halloween) was a custom that was taken to the new world by Irish emigrants. And then, because turnips were less widely available, or because pumpkins are so much easier to carve, it was adapted in it’s new home into the considerably less scary pumpkin jack o’lanterns. And later the custom was imported back to these isles. Now it’s much more common for us to carve a pumpkin at Halloween than to spend hours chiselling out a turnip.

I imagine many of you wouldn’t think of putting turnip into a cake but the grated flesh works really well here giving a delightful sweetness and nuttiness to the cake and keeping it moist and squishy. If you don’t have turnip (though I do urge you to seek it out as it is so underrated) then both parsnips or carrots work well here.

Serves 20

135g light brown sugar
100ml honey
4 large eggs, at room temperature
270g self-raising flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
½ teaspoon salt
1½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/6 whole nutmeg, grated or ¼ teaspoon of ground
75g dried cranberries
75g sunflower or pumpkin seeds (or use a mix of both)
350g turnip (275g once trimmed, peeled and finely grated)
200g butter, melted but cooled slightly

For the cream cheese icing:
100g butter, at room temperature
100g icing sugar
150g full fat cream cheese
1 tablespoon honey
A handful of edible flower petals – cornflowers are lovely

Preheat the oven to 160°C fan and butter and line an approx. 20 x 30cm baking tray. You can use a slightly smaller tray the cake will just be a bit thicker and maybe take a little longer to cook.

Put the sugar, honey and eggs in the bowl of a stand mixer and whisk on a medium high speed until completely combined and they have doubled in volume and are very pale in colour. If you don’t have a stand mixer but them in a large bowl and whisk with an electric whisk.

In a separate bowl measure out the flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg and lightly whisk to combine. Very gently fold the flour mixture into the egg and sugar mixture, until no dry floury bits remain. Then fold in the cranberries, seeds (or nuts) and grated turnip. Finally, gently stir through and the melted butter until just combined.

Pour the batter into the lined baking tray and smooth out to cover the base of the tin evenly. Bake in the preheated oven for 30-35 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Allow to cool a little then turn out of the tin and allow to cool completely.

Once cool make the icing. In a stand mixer beat the butter until soft and then add the icing sugar and beat for another couple of minutes until light and fluffy. You can also do this by hand using a wooden spoon. Then add the cream cheese and honey and beat again until smooth.

Spread a thick layer of icing on top of the cake. Sprinkle the edible flower petals over the top of the icing to decorate and cut into 20 (approx. 5x6 cm) squares to serve.