Carrot Cake with Vanilla Cream Cheese Icing

A quick Google search, during my lunch break at work, informs me that carrot cake has its origins in Medieval times. Perhaps this makes it the first vegetable to be used in sweet cookery, though I have no other basis for making this claim. Now you can find recipes for allsorts of desserts using vegetables: beetroot brownies; courgetter lemon sorbet... I forget what else. Oh, rhubarb (maybe that predates carrots).

Sticky Toffee Pudding

Sticky toffee pudding is a British classic. It was always had a place on dessert menus when I was working in restaurant kitchens, whether it was  the middle of a cold winter or a record breaking summer. 

I've come across a few variations on recipes that, inevitably, revolve around the key ingredient... dates. Some use black treacle, some, like mine, soak the dates in black tea, some use a selection of spices, and others keep it to the basics. 

Which ever way the recipe goes, you'll rarely find a sticky toffee pudding without butterscotch sauce.