It’s been a dearth of desserts here on Craft & Process, so I decided to set that straight. Sure, I could just throw together something chocolatey, but as it’s August now, there’s bountiful summer produce available here in the Midwest. What better way to take advantage of local veggies and still satisfy a sweet tooth than making Carrot Cake!
I spent a chunk of graduate school impressing my friends by baking cakes for our various student events and study sessions. My crowning achievement during the week of graduation was a 4 layered chocolate ganache and peanut butter frosting cake (link to all cakes considered?). I like making cakes–even with the simplest frosting, they’re usually visually stunning. If done well, the sponge hits the right balance of moisture and goes well with the frosting. But they can be really sweet!
We’ve recently been on a kick of trying to de-sweeten our desserts to a) be marginally more healthy (I mean, it’s still dessert) and b) try to regain some of the flavor that gets lost when you go beyond that threshold of super sweetness. Check out our Low Sugar Strawberry Shortcake, for example. Joanne Chang’s Baking with Less Sugar has also been key to our thinking about this sort of baking. For a carrot cake, there is all this great flavor of carrots, nuts, and spices that you lose when you add too much sugar. Props also to Joanne Chang for the method of making the decorative carrot spirals for the cake as well.
I adapted this cake from an old recipe that came out of a cookbook from the employees of Holland Hospital. This sort of collaborative cookbook of local recipes seems fairly common from the mid-twentieth century, at least in the midwest. There is almost certainly an ethnographic dissertation or historical food study to be done on how local culture is visible through these sorts of cookbooks.
In West Michigan, a cookbook like this means that every recipe features loads of sugar, so I’ve done my best to scale that back a bit. I also cut the amount of frosting to just cover the center and top of the cake ala Christina Tossi’s work at Milk Bar (double it if you want to cover the sides as well). It’s is still sweet, and you could probably reign in the sugar even more if you want to experiment. But I made this for a recent family gathering where most everyone’s palettes are born from Dutch West Michigan sugar-loving stock, and they really enjoyed this cake.
This recipe uses two pieces of equipment that will make your life immensely easier but also take up some serious kitchen cabinet/counter real estate. The easier piece to recommend is a good stand mixer like this one. Of course you can mix with a wooden spoon, but this is one of the most-used tools in our kitchen and means that I don’t need to knead stuff like our Crusty White Bread recipe by hand. The second is a food processor. This is a little more optional, because the main thing in this recipe that it is useful for is grating the carrots, so perhaps see if you can borrow from a friend. That said, a food processor also means you can quickly throw together our Olive and Fig Tapenade or mix up a batch of Vegan Chocolate Protein Bars.
- 240 g flour 2 cups
- 2 ½ tsp cinnamon
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 200 g white sugar 1 cup
- 125 g chopped walnuts 1 cup
- 300 g vegetable or canola oil 1 ¼ cups
- 4 eggs
- 80 g raisins ½ cup
- 360 g of grated carrots about 3 cups or 6 carrots
- 100 g cream cheese room temperature (4 oz)
- 1/2 stick butter room temperature (50g or 2 oz)
- 1 ½ tsp vanilla
- 115 g powdered sugar about 1 cup
- 1 carrot
- 100 g white sugar ½ cup
- 6 Tb water
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Preheat oven to 350°F and prepare two 9 inch cake pans (or one 9x13 cake pan) by buttering and flouring them.
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Mix the dry ingredients (flour, cinnamon, baking soda, sugar, and walnuts) together in a bowl.
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In a stand mixer, combine the vegetable oil, eggs, and raisins. Mix on medium speed until combined.
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Add the grated carrots and mix until even.
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Slowly add the dry mixture to the wet ingredients until thoroughly combined.
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Pour into the cake pans and bake for 35-45 minutes until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
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Remove from oven and cool in pans for 20 minutes. Remove the cake from pans and cool on rack to room temperature.
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While the cake layers are baking, peel a carrot into long thin strips.
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Combine sugar and water in saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium heat.
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Add the carrot strips to the sugar water and simmer for 15 seconds.
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Remove from heat and allow mixture to cool to room temperature.
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While the cake layers are baking and cooling, thoroughly beat together the cream cheese and butter.
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Add in the vanilla and beat to combine.
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Slowly add the powdered sugar a bit at a time until it is at your desired sweetness.
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Select the cake layer with a better dome and set aside. Using a serrated knife, cut the dome off of the other layer by carefully slicing across the top. Enjoy a pre-cake snack by just eating that cake dome right now.
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Place the dome-less cake layer on your cake plate or whatever serving vessel you’re using.
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Using a rigid spatula or knife, place approximately half of the frosting on the first layer and spread evenly
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Carefully slide the domed cake layer on top of the cake and spread with the remaining frosting over the dome.
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Remove some of the carrot strips from the sugar water and blot dry with a paper towel.
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Spin the strips into coils of carrot by holding one end of the strip against the end of a chopstick, small dowel, or handle of a utensil, then slowly winding the strip around itself. Position the utensil over the cake where you want the spiral to be, then gently slide the carrot off and onto the frosting. Repeat for as many carrot strips as you have or want.
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Whew! You’re finally done! Enjoy!