RECIPE // Carrot Cake

Moist carrot cake with golden raisins, walnuts, creamed cheese frosting, and lemon zest.

I saw this post for a delicious-looking carrot cake on one of the blogs I follow and I knew I had to have it immediately. I love carrot cake with creamed cheese frosting, and realized that I hadn’t had it in literally years. Liz from My Favourite Pastime (note Canadian spelling of ‘favourite’, which also happens to be my favourite way of spelling it – though WordPress has been attempting to de-Canadianize me with its auto spellcheck, correcting all my flavours and colours and favourites) said that it was moist and not overly sweet, which sounded perfect to me, so I decided to try out her recipe.

I modified the recipe a bit according both to personal preference (I like lemon zest as a topping and prefer golden raisins to currants, and my son is not crazy about nuts so I minced them very fine to add texture and flavor to the batter without making it too nutty) as well as the limitations of my pantry (we have been watching our refined sugar intake and I didn’t have any brown sugar on hand, so I substituted it for coconut sugar).

The cake was not only beautiful to look at, it was as moist and delicious as I had hoped it would be. The great thing about this cake is that the cake itself is not overly sweet, but because of the sweet creamed cheese icing you would never know the difference. It is also chock full of carrots – a full 2 cups! – that give it it’s lovely moist texture. My son and I devoured it in two days flat.

INGREDIENTS:

1.5 cups all-purpose flour

1t baking powder

1t baking soda

1t cinnamon

1/4t nutmeg

3/4 cup coconut sugar

1/2 cup canola oil

100ml apple sauce

3 eggs

2 cups grated carrots

1/3 cup minced walnuts

1/3 cup golden raisins

FROSTING:

6oz creamed cheese

1/2 Cup powdered sugar

1T lemon juice

1t vanilla

Zest of one lemon

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

2. Line and oil an 8 inch round cake pan with parchment paper.

3. Sift all the dry ingredients except the coconut sugar into a large bowl.  Mix in the coconut sugar with a spoon and form a well in the center.

4. Combine the canola oil, applesauce, and eggs, then add to the dry mixture and stir until just combined.

5. Fold in the grated carrots, walnuts, and raisins, then pour the mixture into the cake pan.

6. Bake for one hour, on until a toothpick comes out clean.

7. While the cake is baking, beat all of the ingredients for the icing (with the exception of the lemon zest) in a bowl.

8. Let the cake cool completely before spreading the icing over the cake with a spatula.

9. Sprinkle the top with the lemon zest, serve and enjoy. 🙂