Vegetable Cakes

I've always been a huge fan of vegetable cakes. I don't mean broccoli cake (though I like that, too) - I mean sweet cakes that use veg as one of their main ingredients. In my experience the British often find this a bit weird - people freak out about zucchini loaf (sorry, courgette loaf) and don't even get them started on pumpkin pie. I guess vegetable-as-baking-ingredient is more of an across-the-pond thing, though there are signs that things are changing. Carrot cake (originating from Canada) is now as much a British classic as it is an North American one; beetroot seems to be the cake ingredient du jour, with Nigel Slater extolling its virtues and a very popular version being sold at London farmers' markets; and one of last year's hot cookbooks was all about making cakes healthier using veg. There's even a company in Northumberland specializing in root vegetable cakes. Bring on the healthy desserts, I say!