Welcome back to Week 7!
This week’s recipe was a carrot cake! Carrot cakes are moist cakes filled with grated carrots and (sometimes) chopped walnuts, covered in a rich cream cheese frosting – one of my favorites! I’ve never made one before, so I was excited to try it out!
The first thing I noted was that there isn’t any butter in the cake batter. In the frosting, yes, but not in the batter. In place of the butter, it calls for two ripe bananas, mashed. I thought this was a little odd because I can’t recall a carrot cake that had notes of banana in the flavor, but we’ll see! This recipe also calls for carrots, of course, which I grated using the largest grater “setting” I had (aka the side with the biggest holes). Fun fact: 4 oz grated carrots ~ 1.5 large carrots.
Another interesting part of the recipe is that it calls for sunflower oil. Now, again, I live in a very small town which doesn’t offer a lot for “fancy” ingredients, and seeing as I was quarantining last week (you heard that right, I’m freeeee!), I had to use a substitution. The best substitutions are as follows: safflower oil, corn oil, extra-light olive oil, canola oil, and refined avocado oil. You can check out the reasoning behind these substitutions here. I ended up using corn oil.
The batter turned out a nice light brown color with chunks of walnuts and carrots floating around wonderfully. It was a little more liquid-y than I expected it to be, but it made evening it out in the tin a pretty easy process! The flavor of the batter was very banana heavy, so I’ll be interested in how the overall flavor ends up tasting.
As always, I’m trying to fight the Great Sinking Disaster with my cakes, so decreased the amount of baking powder (it called for 2 tsp and I put in ½ tsp), and I tried decreasing the cooking time. It calls for 50-60 minutes, but I put the cake in for 40 minutes, and it wasn’t quite done toward the bottom, so I ended up having to put it in for a total of 50 minutes. Guess what guys? IT DIDN’T SINK! We did it!! Break out the fireworks! Woo!
Now, the cream cheese frosting is arguably the best part about a carrot cake, right? The frosting is really easy to make, all you need is cream cheese, softened butter, icing sugar, and vanilla extract. Throw it all in a mixer and ta-dah! Cream cheese frosting! As always with frosting, you want to make sure you cool the cake completely before decorating so the frosting doesn’t melt right off the sides of the cake.
The frosting had a really nice bite from the cream cheese, but a nice sweetness from the icing sugar. I've typically said that I would make more icing, but this was the perfect amount to cover the top and a little bit of the sides of the cake.
This cake was wonderful! The cake itself shocked me a little bit with how powerful the banana flavor was – definitely not a “normal” carrot cake flavor, and it wasn’t as moist as a “normal" carrot cake either. Not to say it wasn’t nice and moist inside the cake though, it was delightful! The strong banana flavor may have come from the slightly over-ripe bananas I used instead of just ripe ones as the recipe called for. Typically, as bananas ripen, the flavor gets stronger (that’s why you’re supposed to use over-ripened bananas for banana bread). The cream cheese frosting balanced nice with the carrot-y/banana-y flavor of the cake, and overall, very tasty!!
To say I could cry about how great this cake turned out would not be a lie, ha-ha! After last week’s fiasco with the Battenburg cake and getting over Covid, I really needed a win this week. And wouldn’t you know, the universe listened!
Overall, I’d rate this cake a 5/5! This cake was absolutely delicious and very easy to make! I would highly recommend baking this recipe!
Now, to end this week, I’d like to direct your attention to the top of the page where it says “Classic Cakes” beside “All Posts.” As I mentioned in the first post, I’m going to be baking my way through each chapter of Mary Berry’s Baking Bible. I will be categorizing each of the bakes into each chapter that they’re in. So, all of the cakes I’ve done so far have been in the Classic Cakes chapter and will always be available under that tab here on the website. There won’t be the same number of bakes in each chapter, but each chapter will continue to have their own tab. Stay tuned for a NEW chapter next week!
Once I get done with a chapter, I’ll rank all the bakes in order from best to worst, based on ease and overall flavor. Here is my ranking for the Classic Cakes chapter!
1. Carrot Cake
5. Madeira Cake
That’s it for week seven, the carrot cake! Thank you for following along with me, and, again, if you have any questions, feel free to use the “Get in Touch” feature on my “About Me” page and subscribe to get updates on posts!
See you next week!
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