Pastry chef Diana Zamora offers up a recipe for one of the most famous veg-in-dessert creations: carrot cake. In her household, the treat was a staple during birthday celebrations.

This year, inspired by the beautiful carrots at the farmers market, springtime and my mom, whose 87th birthday is April 21 (Happy Birthday, Mom!), I decided to revisit carrot cake.

Make the cake: Melt butter in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium-high, stirring often; gently simmer butter until white milk solids separate from butter-fat, about 10 minutes.

This carrot cake only bakes for about 30 minutes, which doesn’t give the carrot shreds long to soften. Bigger chunks of carrots won’t get soft in that time and nobody wants a crunchy cake.

However, if you take a deep dive into the r/Old_Recipes subreddit, there are even more hilariously dubbed recipes to be found ...

Reed, speaking with Nexstar, also pointed to a carrot cake that had been served decades prior (“in the late 18th century”) at the Fraunces Tavern in New York City, but that recipe, too, did ...