Hello to everyone visiting from Pinterest! I'm so happy that you've found my little corner of the Internet :) There's quite a bit here to explore, so please have a look around! Also, I'd love it if you would join us over on Facebook:
Back in my baking days (I owned a baking business through law school), I made this carrot cake for a fancypants Dallas steakhouse at least weekly. It wasn't a recipe that I had in my repertoire when the restaurant asked for it, so I started with something that I found online (sorry, it's been so long I'm not sure who to credit for this) and played around with it until it was P-E-R-F-E-C-T! I was making this cake as payment for my office paint job (wedding singer style!), but I wanted to be able to share it with Little Bear. I know the sugar still isn't ideal, but I made some changes to health it up as much as cake can be healthed. Honestly, if you didn't know that it had been healthified, you probably couldn't even tell that it is entirely unrefined!
I'll go ahead and share the healthy and the original version here, since cake is cake and maybe just shouldn't be healthy sometimes...
Unrefined Carrot Cake (whole wheat, coconut oil, turbinado sugar)
Ingredients
- 2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
- 2 tablespoons vital wheat gluten
- 1 1/1 tablespoons ground cinnamon
- 1 1/2 teaspoons ground allspice
- 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 2 teaspoons ground ginger
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 4 eggs
- 3/4 cup buttermilk (or 3/4 cup whole milk mixed with 1 tablespoon vinegar)
- 1 cup coconut oil, melted
- 1 1/2 cups turbinado sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 3 cups grated carrots (300 grams by weight)
- 2/3 cup chopped pecans
- 1 1/3 cup crushed pineapple
Do your prep work: grate the carrots and chop the nuts.
In a large bowl, whisk the dry ingredients together until well combined.
In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs, milk, sugar, and vanilla together until well combined. If you keep stirring, it will eventually all come together (the eggs act as a great little emulsifier).
Add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture and stir until just combined.
In the large bowl, combine the carrots, pecans, and pineapple. Mix well.
Add the batter to the carrot mixture and mix until the batter is homogeneous throughout.
Grease two round 8" pans. Divide batter evenly between the pans.
Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.
Alternatively, bake cupcakes for 30 minutes. Makes 2 dozen cupcakes.
Frost with cream cheese frosting (sorry, but there is just no way to make cream cheese frosting healthy!). I make mine with one 8 ounce block of cream cheese, one 4 ounce stick of butter, one bag of powdered sugar, and one tablespoon of vanilla extract. Let the cream cheese and butter come to just below room temperature. Beat cream cheese and butter for several minutes, pushing the sides down as needed. SLOWLY add the powdered sugar, beating well between additions.
Traditional Carrot Cake
Ingredients
- 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1 1/1 tablespoons ground cinnamon
- 1 1/2 teaspoons ground allspice
- 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 2 teaspoons ground ginger
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 3 eggs
- 3/4 cup buttermilk (or 3/4 cup whole milk mixed with 1 tablespoon vinegar)
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 3 cups grated carrots (300 grams by weight)
- 2/3 cup chopped pecans
- 1 cup crushed pineapple
No comments:
Post a Comment