Vegetables in desserts? Tomato ice cream, beetroot muffins, blue potato cake – they work, and you can try making them, too
- Top-rated dessert chefs have long been trying out unusual vegetable combinations, working with their natural sweetness similar to using berries and fruits
- For people who are starting to experiment, one chef recommends using vegetables that are already sweet in their raw state, like ripe tomatoes or peas
Parsnips, potatoes and beetroot are more likely to be found in the cooking pot than in desserts. However, many vegetables also work well in sweet dishes.
“When you talk about vegetables in desserts, it sounds kind of bonkers at first,” says patissier Rene Frank, founder of Coda, a restaurant in Berlin, Germany. “But for as long as I can remember, my grandmother has been making a great carrot cake.”
The menu at Coda is based around dessert cuisine and pastry techniques. In 2020 the restaurant received its second Michelin star. Frank uses sweeteners such as honey or sugar beet syrup, working with their natural sweetness, similar to using berries and fruits.
“When I use vegetables in dessert, I automatically reduce the amount of sugar,” explains Christian Huembs, head pastry chef at The Dolder Grand in Zurich, Switzerland, and a judge on the German counterpart to The Great British Bake Off. For more than 10 years now, vegetables have played a role in his desserts.
In fact, many vegetables bring more sweetness than you might think. “Lemon sorbet is much more well known than carrot ice cream. But with lemon, I need to add a lot of sugar,” Frank says. With good carrots, he says, he can achieve a delicious and fruity result just with the intrinsic sweetness that comes from boiling down the juice.