Bossie’s chef Christina Olufson shares her beet cake recipe

A big, white statue of a cow sits on top of a building along Milpas Street on Santa Barbara’s Eastside, where the local ice cream business McConnell’s Fine Ice Creams started. Since then, restaurants have come and gone from the building, but none have stayed for very long.

Former Somerset chef Lauren Herman and her wife and fellow chef Christina Olufson want to break the curse. They opened the doors of Bossie’s Kitchen earlier this year and are serving up high-quality comfort food using farmers market ingredients.

“We named it after the cow, old Bossie,” said Olufson, who focuses on baking all the bread, cakes and pastries for the restaurant.

“My favorite cake right now is a beet, carrot and parsnip cake layered with a yogurt glaze, candied citrus, and walnuts,” she said, standing next to a crate full of veggies from Chavez Family Farms.

“We get all our beets, carrots and kale from them right now. The red beets are fun because they turn the cake this really bright red color but once it bakes it looks like a regular carrot cake,” she said. “I don’t understand the chemistry behind it but it’s fascinating.”

-4c organic all purpose flour

-2tsp baking soda

-1.5 tsp ground cinnamon

-1.5 tsp salt

-2c

-4c cane sugar

-8ea eggs

-2ea large farmer’s market carrots, any color, peeled and shredded

-3ea farmer’s market beets, any color, peeled and shredded

-1ea farmer’s market parsnip, peeled and shredded(you are looking to have about

-6oz organic walnuts, toasted and chopped

Whisk dry ingredients together (flour, salt, cinnamon, soda)

Whisk together the oil, sugar

Add dries to wet ingredients, mix until combined

Mix in shredded veggies and walnuts

Preheat oven to 350F, prepare cake pans with spray, line the bottoms with parchment paper rounds. Fill each cake pan a little over half-full. bake for 1 hour, until the cakes bounce back to the touch or a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool completely.

Finish cakes with a classic cream cheese frosting, or yogurt+candied orange glaze!

The batter may be made up to a week in advance, prior to baking and will yield two 9” x 3” cakes.