Who said sweet and tasty vegetable cakes are utopias? This article will turn your whole idea about confectionery art, offering to cook carrot cake. Recipes with photos are attached along with step-by-step explanations. Having prepared and tasted such a dessert, you won’t immediately understand what it is made of, but one thing is for sure: it is extremely tasty, unbanal and very useful, and the unusual color of such a cake is a separate topic.
Classic Cake Recipe
The most delicious carrot cake is prepared according to the traditional recipe of the Picasso family (originally from Italy), which was unfairly forgotten for three whole centuries, but was revived by enterprising Englishmen during the war years when it was tight with food. Carrot cake according to the classic recipe is easy to prepare, and the cake layers include:
- 800 grams of fresh carrots.
- Four eggs.
- Two glasses of granulated sugar and wheat flour.
- 150 ml of sunflower oil, preferably refined.
- 2 teaspoons of baking powder for the dough or 1 teaspoon without a slide of soda.
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon.
- A handful of raisins and walnuts.
The cream in a traditional carrot cake was made from cream cheese, grated with powdered sugar and natural flavors, but recently it has often been replaced with a more affordable cream made from whipped cream, sour cream or even egg whites.
How to cook a carrot biscuit?
Preparing a carrot cake is easier than it sounds: first you need to wash and peel the carrots well, and then grate it on a fine grater. In a wide bowl, mix all the dry ingredients of the recipe, raisins inclusive (nuts should be chopped into small pieces). In a separate bowl, beat the eggs until light foam, add oil and carrots and beat a little with a blender.
Then pour this mass into the flour mixture and mix thoroughly. Line the baking dish with parchment (skip this step if the mold is silicone) and grease with oil. Pour the dough into it and, if necessary, level the top with a spoon. Place the mold in the oven, which has been preheated to a temperature of 200 degrees and bake the cake until cooked for forty minutes. After baking, you should not immediately remove the cake from the mold, but wait ten minutes to let it “breathe” and reach its condition.
Best cream for cake
For carrot cake, the easiest cream is cream cheese, which is easy to make at home (it will be much cheaper with the same taste). To do this, take a large piece of gauze cloth and fold four times, line the bowl with the resulting cloth and put 800 grams of oily homemade sour cream in it. Gently tie a cloth in a bag so that sour cream does not leak out and hang in a cool place for a day. Excess whey drains from sour cream under weight, and the remaining mass will be cream cheese of a very tender consistency. Beat the resulting cheese with a glass of icing sugar and a pinch of vanillin. To do this, take three hundred grams of cheese and one hundred grams of powder, optionally you can add the zest of orange for a more pronounced flavor.
Assembly and decoration of the cake
Carefully cut the baked biscuit with a sharp knife into two layers along and coat with butter cream, also coat the sides and top of the cake, decorating as you wish. It is very convenient to bake two cakes in the same forms, so as not to bother subsequently with such a scrupulous procedure.
It will be very appropriate to make several bright carrots out of mastic and decorate the finished dish with them, subtly hinting at its contents. The same can be done with food colors, which are added to the cream. Also, the sides of the cake can be sprinkled with crushed nuts or biscuit crumbs, and you can use almond petals or coarse chocolate chips. In the photo, the carrot cake looks appetizing, you can not distinguish it from an ordinary biscuit, and after tasting it, you can’t believe that it is made from carrots.
Vegan Carrot Cake
There is also a carrot cake recipe without animal products, moreover, it is referred to as diet food, since it does not contain flour and sugar. Skeptical culinary specialists can try to make such a cake and make sure that it tastes great, despite the lack of “basic” products for dessert. Essential Ingredients:
- Two large carrots.
- Four apples.
- The juice of one lemon.
- 260 grams of oatmeal.
- 10 tbsp. tablespoons of coconut or olive oil.
- 50 grams of stevia, can be replaced with 120 grams of honey, but its vegans do not consume.
- With a pinch of salt, ground cinnamon and cloves, you can also use nutmeg and ginger.
The preparation of the dough for such a carrot cake according to the recipe does not differ in originality, despite the ingredients: carrots and apples are rubbed on a fine grater, mixed with stevia, which anyone can replace with honey. Next, oatmeal should be chopped in a coffee grinder and mixed with spices, add oil (coconut should be melted in a water bath) and mixed with grated mass. Stir thoroughly until the grated carrots are evenly distributed over the dough, then put it in a greased form, level the top of the dough and bake in the oven for forty minutes. The temperature regime of baking is 200 degrees.
Cream for Vegan Cake
Given that vegans do not consume animal products, at first glance it seems impossible to prepare a delicious cream cake. This is an erroneous opinion of those who are not familiar with the subtleties of the culinary of this culture. Here are some cream recipes to choose from that go well with carrot cake:
- Soak a glass of almond for four to six hours, then peel it off and beat it with a powerful blender at the highest speed, adding four to six pitted dates and clean water in the process to the required cream density. Dates can be replaced with powdered sugar (2 tbsp. Tablespoons) if sugar intake is not important for you.
- Beat four large bananas of high maturity with a blender and juice of 1/2 lemon, add a little sugar if the cream does not seem sweet enough. Lemon is added so that the banana flesh does not darken when it comes in contact with air. Some for this reason add grated vegan chocolate or just cocoa powder (1 tablespoon).
- A more delicious, but expensive cream can be prepared on the basis of canned coconut milk. A jar, with a capacity of 400 grams, is placed in the refrigerator for at least a day (you should worry about this before baking), and then carefully open it. Pour some water into a cup (you can just have a drink - this is an extremely useful thing), and beat the remaining thick mass with 100 grams of powdered sugar into a lush cream that is applied to the top of the cake. His taste is simply amazing, but for those who do not favor coconuts, he will not like it, so the option of bananas is the most optimal.
Any cream you like and cook is laid out on a cooled cake, the top of which can be decorated with fruits or ground nuts.
With cottage cheese and whipped cream
This recipe with a photo of a carrot cake belongs to a healthy diet, as its components are low-calorie and very useful, especially for a child. To prepare the cake, you should mix 400 grams of grated carrots with 0.5 cups of granulated sugar and let them stand for a while so that the juice stands out. Drain it, and combine the carrot mass with four eggs, previously ground with 100 grams of cottage cheese. To the resulting orange mass add one glass of flour mixed with a bag of baking powder for the dough, and mix everything thoroughly to a uniform consistency. Transfer the dough into a silicone baking dish and send to the oven, preheated to 180 degrees. Bake the cake until cooked, which will be about 50 minutes. Cool the finished cake and carefully cut it lengthwise into two layers, which are coated with whipped cream and sugar, and sprinkle the top and sides with coconut.
A simple recipe with sour cream
The simplest carrot cake can be prepared on the basis of a regular biscuit:
- Of 5 eggs and 1.5 tbsp. beat sugar lush foam.
- At the end, add one and a half glasses of grated carrots on a fine grater, 1/3 teaspoon of soda, quenched with vinegar, and the same amount of wheat flour.
- Bake in the oven at 200 degrees until tender. The form must be laid out with parchment paper.
- Allow to cool completely in the mold and only then remove and cut into two layers.
- Beat 400 grams of fat sour cream with a pinch of vanilla and 1 cup of icing sugar until light foam. Coat the cake, its sides and top. Sprinkle with large chocolate chips.
The cake is surprisingly delicate, pleasant color and quite tasty. It can be decorated with candied fruits or small marmalade sweets, as well as pieces of fresh fruit.
Another simple carrot cake recipe
This version of the cake is prepared on the basis of margarine, while it has one more peculiarity: carrots for it are rubbed on a coarse grater, and not fine, as is usually done. Two glasses of grated mass are needed, which we mix with two glasses of sugar and leave for half an hour or an hour so that the carrots let the juice go. Then beat four eggs with a pinch of nutmeg or cinnamon, add 200 grams of margarine melted in a water bath and mix with carrots. Then sift two cups of flour, combine with 1 teaspoon of baking powder and add to the carrot mass. Thoroughly mix, shift into a split mold greased and parchment lined, leveling with a spoon, and bake until cooked in the oven at standard temperature (180-200 degrees).
Lemon Cake Cream
A simple carrot cake can be smeared with a fragrant lemon cream, which is prepared as follows: remove the zest from one lemon and squeeze the juice out of it in a separate bowl. Beat 450 grams of sour cream from 1.5 cups of sugar to a light foam, add lemon juice and a little yellow food coloring to them, giving the cream a cheerful tint. Coat the finished cake cakes, lay on top of each other and coat the top and sides with the remnants of the cream. Sprinkle with lemon zest mixed with a small amount of finely chopped walnuts. Let the cake soak for four to six hours in a cool place.
Carrot Chocolate Cake
The recipe for a delicious carrot cake for chocolate lovers will pleasantly surprise and make you reconsider your prejudices about the inability to combine chocolate and carrots in one dessert.
To prepare the base you will need:
- 400 grams of finely grated carrots.
- 100 grams of walnuts.
- 130 grams of chocolate (it is better to take milk).
- 70 grams of raisins and coconut.
- 80 grams of cocoa powder.
- Four eggs.
- 180 grams of coconut or refined vegetable oil.
- 220 grams of granulated sugar.
- 1.5 teaspoons of baking powder for dough and ground cinnamon.
- 0.5 teaspoon of salt and ginger.
- 350 grams of wheat flour.
Step by step cooking
Despite the abundance of ingredients, this delicious carrot cake is prepared as simple as possible: all dry ingredients are mixed right away, eggs and sugar are beaten in a separate bowl, and the butter melted in a water bath is added in the process. Next, add the grated carrots to the egg mass, mix and combine with the dry ingredients. Mix thoroughly again and put in a silicone baking dish, be sure to align the top with a spoon. Place the mold in an oven preheated to 180 degrees and bake for forty minutes (or a little longer), and cool the finished cake and grease it with cream, decorating as you wish.
Cream for chocolate and carrot cake is prepared on the basis of Philadelphia cream cheese, but if it can not afford, then the preparation of homemade cream cheese can be seen above. For 250 grams of cheese, you should take 200 grams of powdered sugar and beat the mass into a lush cloud with a blender. Melt a large bar of chocolate in a steam bath and add at the end of whipping into the cheese mass.