My Favourite Carrot Cake | Community Recipes | Nigella's Recipes (2024)

FAQs

Why not use butter in carrot cake? ›

Carrot cake is oil-based, rather than butter-based. This keeps it moist and helps it last for days. Unfortunately, it also means you lose the leavening power that creaming butter and sugar would bring. (Creaming, or beating together the two ingredients on high speed, aerates the butter.)

Carrot cake (also known as passion cake) is cake that contains carrots mixed into the batter.

Cream cheese frosting is a classic and delicious pairing for carrot cake, complementing its sweet and spiced flavors. Additionally, a cup of hot tea or a scoop of vanilla ice cream can be great accompaniments to enhance the overall dessert experience.

In 1827, carrot cake appeared for the first time in a French cookbook published in Britain, as reported by National Today, but there was a recipe for carrot pudding pie on record from "The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy" as early as 1747, per The Food of England Project.

Texture:Cakes made with oil tend to be moister and have a more tender crumb. Oil coats the flour proteins better than butter, resulting in a softer texture. Cakes made with butter can have a richer flavor and a slightly firmer texture. Butter contributes to a more traditional and dense cake structure.

Yes, the carrots, but also typical extras like raisins, chopped nuts, or shredded coconut, which enhance the flavor and texture of the final result, add to the problem of cleanly lopping off a piece. For example, raisins create uneven pockets of moisture within the cake, causing slices to crumble more easily.

Most of its flavor comes from brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and carrots. Ginger adds the most delicious zing, but it isn't overpowering at all. The cake is dense, but each forkful tastes super soft and extra lush.

Rich in Antioxidants. Carrots, the star ingredient of carrot cake, are abundant in antioxidants like beta-carotene. These compounds protect the body against harmful free radicals, helping to combat cellular damage and reduce the risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease and certain types of cancer.

The carrot cake we know was originally published in L'art du cuisinier's second volume by Antoine Beauvilliers in 1814 in French before that recipe was translated in 1824. It would later see its biggest resurgence in popularity during the Second World War for very similar reasons.

Some people love the added texture and sweetness that raisins bring to the cake, while others prefer the cake without them. Traditionally, some carrot cake recipes do include raisins as one of the ingredients, along with grated carrots, nuts, and spices.

What can I decorate my carrot cake with? ›

I decorated my carrot cake with some small carrot toppers and a nice sprinkles of walnuts! You can of course leave the nuts off if you would prefer but I personally love the texture the walnuts give a carrot cake. As with every bake, the decoration is optional and can be left if preferred or even scaled up a notch!

You can eat carrot cake hot, cold, warm, or even room temperature. I love a slightly warm slice but this cake is also incredibly delicious chilled with the cake having the best texture when chilled! Also, with the cream cheese frosting it is best to keep the cake chilled.

Carrots contain pigments that are sensitive to changes in pH balance. When the shreds of carrot come into contact with the alkaline baking soda, a chemical reaction takes place that causes the pigments to change color.

Commonly referred to as 'chai tow kway' in the Teochew dialect, these smooth and soft fried rice cakes can be found in almost every hawker centre. It is served black (fried with sweet dark soya sauce) or white (original).

Carrot cake is thought to have originated in England where housewives used sweet products (e.g carrots) to naturally sweeten their confections during World War II. In 1943, the Ministry of Food published a short recipe for carrot cake.

Unlike many other recipes, mine makes use of brown butter instead of oil, a simple swap that layers in some toasty toffee flavors while keeping the cake as moist and rich as those made with oil.

Butter is only 70-80% fat and the rest is water and butter solids. Using oil in cakes reduces the amount of water in the mixture and can mean a moister cake with a tender crumb.

The water that's present in butter strengthens the gluten in a cake's flour, resulting in a crumb that's more dense and not quite as tender as a cake made with oil.

The key to getting an intense carrot flavor in my cake is using two types of carrots: a caramelized carrot puree and finely shredded carrots. Roasted and pureed carrots make this cake intensely carrot flavored. Carrots are a natural source of sugar, and roasting them at a high temperature caramelizes the sugars within.