Sunday, February 26, 2012

Carrot Cake and Excuses

So far the year has been pretty alright. I know we're two full months into it now and this is my first post for year year (oops) but life does this thing where it just gets by you.
I've been a little slack lately with my baking. Oops again, no excuses really. I could say I'm not baking in an effort to be healthier, but that's just a convenient excuse. However this cake could almost pass as healthy.

Carrot Cake

1 cup raw sugar (mucho better for you than the super refined and bleached white granulated sugar)
1 cup veggie oil (I used rice bran oil, I guess it's better for you than butter, and it keeps the cake much more moist)
3 eggs
1 1/3 cups wholemeal flour (same with the sugar, better than the refined bleached stuff. Also more fibre)
1 1/3 tsp baking powder
1 1/3 tsp baking soda
1 1/3 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp all spice (my addition)
2 cups grated carrot (about 2 medium sized carrots, but just a rough measurement, don't be using 2 and 3 eights of a carrot)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (I used pumpkin seeds instead, we didn't have any walnuts and pumpkin seeds are cheaper and go further)

Preheat oven to 180C.
Grate your carrots and chop your nuts.
Mix the sugar and oil together.
Beat in the eggs one at a time.
Sift the dry ingredients together then mix into the oil and egg mix, don't overbeat. In fact, probably better to leave it with a few lumps of dry mix showing through than over beating it.
Add the carrot and walnuts (or pumpkin seeds) and fold in. Your last little bits of dry mix should get mixed in during this stage too.
Pour into a greased and/or lined round cake tin, I used an 8 or 8 1/2 inch. Level if you need to.
Bake it.
My recipe said 70 minutes, it lied. I took it out at 50 and it was already well done. Well, not too well done, but the edge was crunchy but it was darn tasty. I like a bit of crunch with my cake.

Bourbon Yoghurt
1/2 cup plain natural yoghurt (isn't yoghurt better for you than ice cream, cream, or cream cheese icing?)
1 very heaped teaspoon of icing sugar
1 tsp - 2 tbsp bourbon
Mix all together. Sugar and bourbon to taste.
You could use any other boozy or vanilla or whatever, but I thought the bourbon went with the flavour and spices of the cake.

I dusted the cake with icing sugar, then served it with the yoghurt on the side. My family then promptly smothered the rest of the cake with cream cheese icing. Dumb.