Carrot Cake

Recipe in Finnish / Resepti suomeksi

When our children were small I often baked carrot cake. With lots of grated carrot stuffed in it, the cake felt healthier than an average cake did, and it felt like a large part of our daily intake of vegetables was taken care of by eating cake – haha! Although, the cake often turned into muffins, as they were more fun for the kids and easier to pack in the picnic basket to take on our excursions.

The muffins we often served without the topping – this way they were even more healthier and less messy when indulged outdoors. Either way – with or without the topping – they always went down like a treat.

My go-to carrot cake / muffin recipe used to be one that I found in a recipe booklet for kids. It came with a weekly Donald Duck magazine! The recipe had plenty of carrot, which I liked, but to be honest the end result lacked fluffiness. Neither was the topping quite as satisfying to me as I would have liked it to be.

My search for the perfect carrot cake recipe has been going on for some time now. I have collected recipes and tested several along the way. By combining different recipes and refining upon them, I feel that I have now perfected the recipe to my own liking – and the family’s, too. I think this recipe is definitely worth sharing to other carrot cake lovers out there.

This recipe still has plenty of carrots, and I have added almond meal to it, which both adds to the flavour and moistness. Carrot cake isn’t really a carrot cake without the topping, right? I love the topping and love having lots of it. If you prefer less, you can half the ingredients for the topping.

The chopped nuts on top add a nice crunch and look pretty nice too.

The carrot cake tastes even better the next day. Store it in the fridge.

Carrot Cake

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Ingredients Equipment Method

Ingredients

  

• 3 eggs
• 250 ml caster sugar
• 300 ml plain flour
• 100 ml almond meal
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• ½ tsp salt
• 400 ml finely grated carrot (approx. 5 medium carrots)
• 200 ml canola or rapeseed oil

Icing

• 100 g butter (room temperature)
• 200 g natural cream cheese (Philadelphia)
• 250 ml icing sugar

Topping

• chopped nuts (I use hazelnuts)

Equipment

• 20 x 30 cm cake form / oven dish

Method

 

1. Heat the oven to 200° Celcius.
2. Grate the carrots finely. When you do the measuring, you can gently press the grated carrots down to fit more into the 400 ml.
3. Whisk the eggs and sugar into a thick fluff.
4. Add the oil and mix it in.
5. Combine all the dry ingredients.
6. Add the dry ingredients and grated carrots into the fluff. Do not whisk but use a spatula or similar to turn the batter until everything is combined.
7. Pour the batter into a lined baking/oven dish. Bake for 25-30 minutes until it is cooked through. I test my cakes with a match. I dip the match into the middle part of the cake, and if it comes out clean, the cake is done.
8. Let the cake cool down before adding the icing.

Icing

1. Mix all the ingredients into a smooth mixture. If there are any lumps, use a whisk or stick mixer to smooth them out.
2. Spread the icing on top of the cake using a knife.
3. Sprinkle with chopped nuts and store in the fridge.