John requested carrot cake for his birthday this year!
That sweet little strawberry tin, was from my Grammy D and holds baking soda. I am quite sure she used it for the same exact thing.
Fresh carrots, there is nothing quite like them.
Although I think I make carrot cake once or twice a year, I had no idea where to find a recipe I might have used in the past. So, to the iPad I went. Turns out there are a couple of schools of carrot cake recipes (probably more than a couple, but a couple that I noticed anyway). Some recipes are heavy on the oil, which I read described as greasy, and others substitute buttermilk in the recipe to reduce the amount of oil. I am certain that my recipes have always been in the oil category (though it never would have occurred to me to describe them as greasy) so I stuck with what I know. I do think I will try a butter milk version another time though, just for fun. Luckily, our local farmer has carrots already!
My recipe search ended here. But my John likes a plain Jane cake, without all the raisins and nuts and I didn’t have all the exact same ingredients, so here is where I ended up:
3-4 Cups coarsely ground carrots (thank you food processor!) I used 4 cups, but if you want to add raisins, coconut, walnuts, 3 cups is probably enough.
4 extra-large eggs (thank you Parker Produce hens)
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/4 cup veg oil
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger (I used fresh and added a little extra)
1/4 tsp ground cloves
Mix and bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes (I could only find 1-9″ pan and 1-8″ pan in my pantry, so I baked the 8″ cake for about 45 min).
Cream Cheese Frosting:
12 oz cream cheese, softened (I microwave to soften)
4 oz butter (recipe called for unsalted, but I only had salted so that is what I used)
2 tsp vanilla
Lemon juice (from 1/2 a lemon)
2 1/2 c confectioners sugar
Mix frosting ingredients together and frost away! I just got my first offset spatula, I don’t know how I ever, ever frosted a cake before this. I made one batch which enough. If you make this a 3 layer cake (as she does at Zoebakes) or want to have plenty to frost the entire outside, you might double it.
I have to say, I am grateful to Rachel Ray for the, while obvious, super helpful ‘garbage bowl’ technique. Here I am using a ‘compost bowl’.
