Thursday, June 25, 2009

Carrot Cake

The original recipe found on yahoo.

*Cake Part:
[A]
3 cups Grated carrots
1 cup Chopped Pecans

[B]
4 eggs
2 cups soft brown sugar

1 1/4 cup grapeseed or vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla extract

[c]
2 cups Wholemeal flour
2 tsp. Baking powder
2 tsp. Baking soda
1/2 tsp. Salt
2 tsp. ground cinnamon

Cake instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 180 C. Grease and flour 9" pan

[A]
2. Grate carrots and chop pecans.

[B]
3. Beat the eggs and mix in the sugar. Add oil and vanilla essence, beat for a couple of minutes more.

[C]
3. Combine ingredients in [C] - sieve into mixture.
Add in the grated carrots and pecans.

4. Pour into prepared pan and bake in preheated oven for 40-50 minutes
Or until a chopstick inserted into centre of cake comes out clean.

Cool for 10 minutes and turn out onto wire rack and cool completely.

*Frosting Part
1/2 cup Butter, softended and unsalted
1 cup Cream Cheese
1/4 cup Icing sugar
1 tsp. Vanilla essence
Lemon zest and a sprinke of nuts (optional)

Frosting instructions:
1. Combine all ingredients for frosting, and mix until it is smooth and creamy.
You can add in some chopped pecans.

Frost the cooled cake, and eat :)

Additional info for the perfect carrot cake:

Carrot cake doesn't use too much butter, mostly oils. Olive oil is too heavy for this cake so use a vegetable oil. Try grapeseed oil, it has a nice nutty flavor.

Some recipes use all-purpose flour, I prefer the wholemeal - also very healthy!

If you like you can substitute the sugar with honey.

Complimentary cake additions: add zest from lemon or orange to make the cake more tangy.

Desiccated coconut - to give it a nice flavour and texture.

Instead of pecans use walnuts, or mix them together.

Some like to add in pineapple to add to the moisture of the cake. You can read from the list of recipes in the yahoo link I provided earlier, that a lady used zuccini and it turned out much better than her original recipe.