As this was to be my birthday cake, made for me by Hubby ( TDCP - The Demon Cake Professional ) even he expressed a certain nervousness about permitting me to review it. However, once it came out well, and what's more one of the best carrot cake recipes that I've tasted, he was much happier to let me loose on a recipe review.
There are carrot cake recipes and then there are carrot cake inspired recipes. The latter perhaps started out believing they were carrot cakes, but ended up a sponge cake with mere decorative pretensions. This recipe is not one of those. One glance down the ingredients list and your jaw drops through the floor at '525gms of grated carrot!' Carrot cake recipes frequently operate between 150 - 350 gms max of carrot, most baulking at anything over 250 gms. One can perfectly understand why, because the more carrot you use the overall moisture level in the mix increases and cooking it becomes trickier if you are to avoid a doughy undercook, ingredients sinking or soggy posteriors. So 525 gms is bravery indeed.
Grated carrot was the second largest item in terms of weight, but the largest by far in terms of bulk. The rest includes a very moderate two and a half teaspoons of cinnamon, the one and the only spice. This was just sufficient to complement and enhance the earthiness of the carrot, but was never in danger of breaching Carrot Cake Rule No 1. Like all the best carrot cake recipes it is not shy of sugar ( 550 gms ) nor of eggs ( 5), and adds a couple of teaspoons of bicarb for good measure too. Vegans will be saddened to hear.
That leaves the fat -vegetable oil, the flour - plain, a half teaspoon of salt and 150gms of chopped walnuts. The walnuts are for me always a crucial ingredient, they break up the even texture of the grated carrot and give your teeth something to bite into and savour the nutty flavour hit. And its not a small scattering either, when you looked at a wedge of this cake the walnut aggregate is spread like a marbling effect evenly across its flanks. There are no sultanas in this recipe, but then you would only add them if you were concerned about the cake lacking moisture. In other words, sultanas are often used as substitute cover for a general lack of carrot.
The suggested cooking time of an hour and a quarter was, so Hubby informs me, not sufficient to really cook the cake through. Though once released from its spring form tin, it was indeed a magnificent edifice, like a segment cut from a pillar. The frosting was classic, traditional and understated. A cream cheese base ( hurrah!) and added caster sugar rather than nightmare amounts of icing sugar. You'll always tend to use too much icing sugar whilst attempting to bulk up and stiffen your cream cheese. Cream cheese has a lovely astringent after taste, easily lost in a packet of icing sugar. Also TCDP wanted to make candied curls of carrot slices for the top, an idea he pinched from Martha Stewart of all people. Dusted with castor sugar these were a gentle sweet hit to play on the palate when you ate the frosting with the cake.
All in all this is a classic carrot cake recipe that I was unexpectedly more than a bit bowled over by
CARROT CAKE RECIPE SCORE - 8/8
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