Carrot Cakes
This summer, when I visited Tokyo, I had a carrot cake from Sunday Bake Shop and it was the best carrot cake I’ve ever had. It was very light and well balanced, and not too sweet. This recipe is inspired by their carrot cake. Despite the amount of carrot, it doesn’t have a lot of carrot flavor. Instead, it gives moisture and natural sweetness to the cake.
What carrots actually do?
I usually don’t choose carrot cake when I have a choice. I think it’s because, why put vegetables in a cake? Same reason I wasn’t too attracted to zucchini bread at first. But now I understand why it’s popular. Despite the amount of carrot, it doesn’t give lots of carrot flavor. They add sweetness. Carrots are one of the sweetest vegetables out there, packed with natural sugar. Once they’re baked, they bring sweetness without tasting like a vegetable at all.
They also keep the cake moist. Grated carrot is about 85 to 90 percent water. As the cake bakes, that water releases into the crumb and keeps it soft and tender for days. This works especially well in cakes made with oil, since the two together give you that dense but super moist texture carrot cake is known for.
Basic Technique
This cake follows basic oil based cake baking technique : mix wet ingredients together then fold or whisk that into the dry ingredients until just combined. Since there’s no creaming step, there’s no real structural reason to go one way or the other, so it’s mostly about convenience and avoiding overmixing.
Some recipes do it the other way, pouring the dry into the wet in two or three additions. That works just as well, and it can make it a little easier to avoid flour pockets. The thing that matters more than direction is mixing only until you don’t see dry streaks, because overmixing develops gluten and gives you a tougher crumb.
Sugar as wet ingredients
Sugar is dry and granular, so it’s not wet in the literal sense. It gets grouped with the wet ingredients because of what it does in the bowl, not what it looks like.
When you whisk sugar into eggs and oil, it starts dissolving into the liquid (eggs are mostly water, so there’s plenty for it to dissolve into). That makes it act like part of the liquid, and it helps the sugar spread evenly through the batter instead of clumping in spots. Sugar naturally attracts moisture, so once it’s in with the eggs it starts drawing in liquid and loosening up the mixture.
There’s a practical reason too. Whisking sugar with eggs breaks up the yolks and starts dissolving the crystals, which gives you a smoother, slightly thicker emulsion that takes in the oil more easily. If you dump the sugar in with the flour, you’re counting on the liquid to find it and dissolve it later, when you’re trying to mix as little as possible.
Allspice
Allspice is a single spice, not a blend. It’s the dried, unripe berry of the Pimenta dioica tree, native to Jamaica and parts of Central America. The name comes from the fact that it tastes like a mix of several spices at once, which is why people often assume it’s a blend. To substitute, you can mix equal parts of nutmeg, cinnamon and clove. You can also use allspice for other baking goods such as gingerbread cookies, pumpkin pie, I also love it in pancakes!
Carrot Cake
Prep time 15 minutes
Cooking time 30 minutes
Total time 1 hour
Makes 6 muffin-size carrot cakes
For the cake
100g grated carrot (about 1 large carrot)
45g walnuts, chopped
1 large egg
85g neutral oil
40g brown sugar
25g granulated sugar
85g cake flour
½ teaspoon cinnamon powder
1 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
For the frosting
80g cream cheese (room temp)
30g butter (room temp)
80g powdered sugar
Topping
toasted walnuts
powdered sugar
Preparation
Preheat the oven to 325°F.
Toast the walnuts for 10 to 12 minutes, until fragrant. Take out 2 tablespoons of walnuts (about 20g) for topping.
Line a muffin tin with paper liners. Set aside.
Grate the carrots using the largest holes of a box grater. Weigh out 100g of grated carrot.
In a bowl, add the egg, brown sugar, and granulated sugar. Mix well until all the sugar is dissolved. Add the oil and mix well.
Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and all the spices into the bowl. Mix well with a spatula until there are no visible flour streaks.
Add the toasted walnuts and grated carrot and lightly mix them together.
Divide the batter into even 6 portions and add to the lined muffin tin.
Bake the cakes on the middle rack of the oven until a cake tester comes out clean, about 20 minutes, turning the tin once. Once cool to the touch, remove the cakes from the tin and cool on a cooling rack.
While the cakes are baking and cooling, make the frosting. Add the cream cheese and butter to a bowl and sift in the powdered sugar. Whip with a whisk or hand mixer until smooth. Divide the frosting into 6 portions and frost the cakes using a small offset spatula.
Top with the toasted walnuts and sift powdered sugar on top.