recipe carousel #13 - vegetable desserts

A while ago I discovered some strange recipes using chocolate that confused the boundaries between sweet and savoury. Included in this mix was a cacao nib pasta and chocolate roasted cauliflower.

People were very interested in the idea of using ingredients out of the normal “Western” context and so I scoured the blogosphere to bring you some unique recipes that use vegetables in desserts.

Let’s get straight into this week’s seven recipes for vegetable desserts:


Red Lentil Minipuddings are the brainchild of the lovely Ilva in Italy (Lucullian Delights). Each of the ingredients represents some part of her native country – Sweden – and the overall result is an extremely interesting soft, creamy pudding flavoured with lemon, pistachio and honey. Very intriguing. Photo courtesy of Ilva.


Jamaican Choko Tarts were devised by Helen in Australia (Grab Your Fork) with inspiration from a Stephanie Alexander recipe. The choko (also known as chayote, christophine, cho cho, mirliton and vegetable pear) is infamous as the secret ingredient in McDonald’s apple pies. That idea never really bothered me when I was a kid since we grew a choko vine on the pool fence. Helen uses brown sugar and cloves to caramelise the chokos and create these pretty tarts. Photo courtesy of Helen.


Sweet Potato Brownies. Trying to find a healthy recipe that would satisfy her cravings for something sweet, Paula in the USA (The Cookbook Junkie) found this recipe in a women’s fitness magazine. She admits it wasn’t the best brownie she ever tasted, but it was certainly very good and very chocolatey. The sweet potato makes them very moist and Paula discovered they got better after a few days in the fridge. Photo courtesy of Paula.


Butternut Squash Ice Cream. Fiordizucca in the UK (Fiordizucca) whips up a homemade batch of this very unique gelato flavour. She flavours the squash with maple syrup, nutmeg and vanilla. Fiordizucca’s recipes are also written in Italian on her Italian language blog. Photo courtesy of Fiordizucca.


Chocolate & Zucchini Cake comes from Clotilde in France (Chocolate & Zucchini). Clotilde explains that this recipe is fluffy, moist inside with a crisp crust and that the grated zucchini provides excess moisture so you can use less butter. She explains that the zucchini does not flavour the cake and that the chocolate is pronounced and matches well with the hazelnut top. Photo courtesy of Clotilde.


Strawberry, Asparagus & Orange Filet is a very unique dessert from Meeta in Germany (What's For Lunch Honey). White asparagus is teamed with freshly milled black pepper then sweetened with sugar, honey and fresh ginger to create a vibrant dessert salad. A pinch of salt is also thrown in for good measure. Photo courtesy of Meeta.



Pumpkin Pots au Crème is one of those original Recipe Carousel entries that I think need to be posted again under a relevant theme. ChefDoc in USA (A Perfect Pear) takes the traditional flavours of America’s pumpkin pie and turns them into a creamy dessert for Thanksgiving. The chilled pots are topped with amaretti crumbs and crystallised ginger. Photo courtesy of ChefDoc.

Add your own recipe!
If you want to link in your own vegetable dessert recipe and share the love around, just leave the link in the comments section. You didn’t have to invent the recipe yourself, just make it and post it on your site. The whole idea of Recipe Carousel is that good recipes are shared with people who love to cook.
Note: Usual comments are more than welcome but all html links must be recipe related (yours or others).

Check out other Recipe Carousel themes: fruit in savoury food, made from scratch, strawberries, jam, bread, seafood mains, ice cream, soup, chocolate and drinks.

Tags: food and drink recipes recipe carousel vegetables dessert lentils pumpkin sweet potato zucchini asparagus choko chayote butternut squash