Evidence of my carrot cake obsession
Man, I love carrot cake. It would take approximately zero effort to convince me to go to Birchwood Cafe on any given day to see if they happen to have any of their delicious carrot cake available. It’s exactly the kind I like – carroty with cream cheese frosting.
In my carrot cake world view, walnuts are acceptable. Extraneous things like pineapple and coconut ruin the experience for me.
I can see the path of my obsession in the carrot cake, carrot cake-inspired, and marginally carrot cake-related (i.e., dessert recipes that include carrots without actually striving to be anything like actual carrot cake) recipes I’ve flagged over the last year.
Actual Carrot Cakes
- Sigrid’s Carrot Cake (from the Pioneer Woman) – Very straightforward. I wish I had some right now.
- Carrot Cake Recipe (from 101 Cookbooks) – This recipe uses dates and bananas as a sweetener, which is intriguing and which may not violate my “no extraneous crap in carrot cake” rule because they are smushed up enough to be unobtrusive.I actually don’t like eating bananas AT ALL, although I don’t mind bananas in banana bread. I can’t actually explain this. It’s especially weird because I was a competitive-level rugby player for many years, and that is demographic that typically eats a lot of bananas. Bananas are a pretty good recovery food because they are transportable and have a lot of potassium, helping avoid the cramping low potassium can cause.
Fortunately, lots of foods have potassium, so the world won’t experience an epidemic of cramping when Cavendish, the main variety of bananas we eat today, succumb to Panama Disease. Check out Banana: the Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World by Dan Koeppel for more info on this and other banana-related topics. It’s a pretty fascinating book.
Doing it up Raw Style
- Raw Carrot Cake (from Two Blue Lemons) – I have actually made this recipe. It wasn’t bad. I had the same problem with this that I have with a lot of things that aren’t exactly the thing they are trying to replace, which is that it mostly just left me wanting the real thing. But considering this recipe as it’s own thing, I found it made a pretty decent, inarguably nutritious, afternoon snack.
Cupcakes: I love you regardless of whether you are currently in style
- Carrot Cake Cupcakes (from Simply Recipes) – These look to be classic (super basic cream cheese frosting, I cannot resist you) but have an intriguing twist (cinnamon, cardamon, and orange zest).
- Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Vanilla Mascarpone Frosting (from Picky Cook) – To sum it up, Mascarpone.
And so much more
- Carrot Cakey Cookies (from the Kitchn) – These actually look reasonably nutritious, what with the whole wheat flour, wheat bran, oatmeal, and a Greek yogurt-based filling. I’m totally skipping the raisins, though.
- Carrot Cake Ice Cream (from David Leibovitz in the LA Times)
- Carrot Oatmeal Cookies (from 101 Cookbooks) – Not like carrot cake except that they contain carrots. But these are really yummy (raw or cooked) and vegan cookie.