I’ve updated my carrot cake recipe by adding a tangy frosting that tastes like a cream-cheese frosting, but with ingredients that may be easier to get. The cake is moist and spicy, with flecks of orange carrot. The healthy ingredients include plenty of carrots (surprise!), fresh ginger, white whole wheat flour, and very little oil. When I had a piece for breakfast, I felt almost virtuous!
This classic carrot cake costs just $1.09 a serving using organic ingredients or $13.04 for the whole recipe.
The inspiration for the frosting came when my expensive vegan cream cheese turned black with mold just before baking day. I was also out of lemon juice. With the coronavirus lockdown, going out for more wasn’t an option. What to do?
I rustled around my pantry and came up with a small bottle of lemon extract and a big bottle of apple-cider vinegar. Together, these two flavorings turned a regular sweet-but-boring buttercream frosting into a light, bright partner for the pleasantly dense cake.
This recipe suggests making a single-layer sheet cake. That’s so much easier than a layer cake, but you could bake the batter in two nine-inch round pans and cut the baking time by 10 minutes if you want a more glamorous cake. For Easter, consider baking the batter in a greased and floured pan shaped like a bunny.
If you do make this cake, please let me know how it goes in the comments below or on social media. Tag @cookforgood on Twitter or Instagram or post on my Facebook page. Happy baking!
| Prep Time | 35 minutes |
| Cook Time | 45 minutes |
| Passive Time | 1 hour |
| Servings |
servings
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- 3 cups white whole wheat flour 360 grams
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon cardamom
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 cups brown sugar 440 grams
- 1/4 cup canola oil or other neutral vegetable oil
- 3 cups grated carrots 150 grams
- 2 tablespoons minced ginger
- 2 tablespoons apple-cider vinegar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 1 3/4 cups water
- shortening for the cake pan
- 4 ounces vegan butter softened (225 grams)
- 2 3/4 cups powdered sugar 350 grams
- 2 tablespoons aquafaba or plant-based milk
- 2 teaspoons apple-cider vinegar
- 1/4 teaspoon lemon extract
- 1 pinch salt
Ingredients
Frosting
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- Heat oven to 350°F with a rack in the center position. Grease a 9x13-inch baking dish.
- Whisk flour, baking soda, spices, and salt together in a medium bowl. Stir in brown sugar, using the back of a spoon to break up lumps if needed.
- Pour remaining ingredients into flour mixture and stir just until well combined. Pour into the pan and bake for 45 to 50 minutes, until top is firm and tiny air bubbles appear in the center as well as on the edges. Cool cake thoroughly before frosting.
- Put all frosting ingredients in a mixing bowl. Beat slowly until powdered sugar is mostly blended with butter, then beat on medium-high for a minute or two until fluff. Taste and adjust ingredients as needed. (At this point, I always ask my Taster to give it the official taste test.)
- Spread frosting on cooled cake. Serve within two hours or refrigerate for up to five days.
- For speedy baking, I use my food processor to mince the ginger and grate the carrots. Here's how: peel the ginger and cut crossways into thin slices. Put the stainless steel blade into your food processor, turn it on, and drop in the ginger slices through the feeding tube. Let the machine run until the ginger stops bouncing around. Replace the blade with a small-hole grater and grate the unpeeled carrots on top of the ginger.
- For speedy eating, cut a piece or two while the cake is still a bit warm and frost them separately. Carpe diem!
- If you don't have lemon extract for the frosting, use a scant tablespoon of lemon juice instead of the vinegar and lemon extract or replace half the vegan butter with vegan cream cheese.
Nutritional Information for Carrot Cake
Per serving (1/12th recipe), this cake has 465 calories, 22% of calories from fat, 74% from carbohydrates, and 4% from protein.
It has 4 grams protein, 5 grams fiber, no cholesterol and 12 grams of fat (6 saturated, 3 unsaturated, and 3 polyunsaturated. It's high in vitamin A, vitamin B1, iron, niacin, potassium, and zinc.
