As a mother of two, I know how challenging it can sometimes be to add vegetables to children’s menus. Hiding vegetables inside a cake is clever, but it doesn’t seem very appetising at first. However, I have a few cakes that have been tested on dozens of children and adults and approved by them. From a minty zucchini cake, whose pleasant flavour in no way betrays its healthy content, to an impressive vertical pumpkin sponge festive cake, which was chosen as the children’s favourite and suits the table well for a birthday or party, those recipes prove that veggies CAN rock the cake world. 😉
In cakes, you can use brown sugar or sweetener with stevia, which does not have a noticeable characteristic stevia taste. You can find these, for example, from manufacturers Nicks, Good Good, or Umami or others specific to your region – they are sold in all major supermarkets and should be quite easy to find.
Vertical cake with pumpkin sponge
Ingredients
Sponge
Buttercream
Preparation
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Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Peel the pumpkin and cut it into small cubes. Boil in water until soft, drain the water, and purée the pumpkin with a hand blender until smooth - you should end up with about 260-270g of pumpkin purée. Let the purée cool down.
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Separate the egg yolks and whites. In a large bowl, whisk the egg yolks until light and fluffy. Stir in the pumpkin purée, then gradually add the flour mixed with the baking powder. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form, and then carefully fold them into the batter, mixing gently. Line a baking tray with baking paper and pour the airy batter gently onto the baking paper. Spread evenly and bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 25-30 minutes.
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Now prepare the buttercream. To do this, whisk the room-temperature butter for at least 1-2 minutes at high speed with a hand mixer or in your KitchenAid. Add the icing sugar and vanilla sugar and whisk for another 2-3 minutes. Add the cream cheese and continue whisking for at least another 3-4 minutes. Transfer to the refrigerator to chill until the sponge is ready and cooled.
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Remove the baked sponge from the oven and let it cool. Trim the edges straight and then cut the sponge into strips about 10-12cm high. Now spread a thin layer of buttercream on a strip and roll the first strip up like a Swiss roll, then stand it upright on a cake stand (vertically). Spread a thin layer of buttercream on the next sponge strip and place this strip around the vertically placed cake roll. Continue the same until you have built a swirly cake ring and all the sponge strips have been used. Use the remaining buttercream to evenly cover the sides and top of the cake. Decorate the top of the cake with strawberries. And it’s time for yummie-yums-yums!
Note
Some tips for success:
- To bake a lactose-free cake, use lactose-free cream cheese and butter
- For a successful sponge, it is important to boil the pumpkin first and drain and cool it properly, because this way you will separate the excess liquid from the pumpkin, which otherwise can interfere with the success of the sponge.
- When making the dough, be gentle when mixing the egg whites into the dough and try to avoid mixing too hard so that the egg white foam does not collapse.
- When the dough is ready, pour it onto a baking sheet covered with baking paper and spread it out in an even thin layer with a spatula. After baking, cut the edges straight and I mark long strips of the same size with a ruler, which you can then cut with a knife and start lifting the cake together. It is very important that the strips are exactly the same height and have straight edges, otherwise the cake will be uneven on top.
