Carrot Spice Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Since Kurt’s birthday is just a few days before Valentine’s Day, there have been years when there was an overload of sweet treats during that second week of February. This year, it was a little different since Kurt was traveling for work on his birthday. We waited and celebrated both occasions on the 14th. Of course, I questioned him in advance regarding what kind of cake he wanted this year. In early December, I read Alice Medrich’s latest book, Flavor Flours, in which she suggested the New Classic Boston Cream Pie made with corn flour chiffon layers with a rice flour-thickened pastry cream is better than the original wheat flour version. I was sure this was going to be Kurt’s birthday cake because he lives for Boston Cream Pie. Instead, he shocked me by requesting a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. I was surprised but delighted to make a carrot cake. My go-to carrot cake recipe has always been the one from The New Basics Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins. It includes walnuts, shredded coconut, and crushed pineapple, and the cream cheese frosting has a little lemon juice in it which I love. I’ve been making that recipe for years and never felt I needed a different approach to carrot cake. But, I decided to try something new this time. Also in Flavor Flours, there’s a Carrot Spice Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting made with rice flour and oat flour that’s touted as being a better-than-ever and gluten-free take on a classic. Now, let me explain, neither of us has any sort of gluten sensitivity, but I do love experimenting with different types of flour to discover new tastes and textures. This carrot cake is completely gluten-free, but, more importantly for me, it’s completely delicious with a delicate crumb. It seems impossible since carrot cake is usually somewhat dense, but even with the walnuts this was a light and crumbly cake. 

It’s very similar to my standard carrot cake recipe in that it’s made with vegetable oil rather than butter, and that’s mixed with sugar and eggs. Rice flour and oat flour were combined with baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, freshly grated nutmeg, ground cloves, and salt. The dry ingredients were mixed into the wet, and then grated carrots and toasted, chopped walnuts were added. Thanks to perfect timing, I had just received a bunch of fresh carrots from our CSA that I shredded for the cake. I baked the cakes in eight-inch round pans and let them cool. For a layer cake, one and a half times the recipe for frosting is needed. The frosting recipe here includes cream cheese, butter, confectioners’ sugar, and vanilla, and I added lemon juice because I can’t give up that detail of my usual carrot cake approach. One thing to keep in mind with this cake is that because it is especially crumbly, it definitely requires a crumb coat of frosting. I scooped some of the frosting from the big bowl in which it was mixed into a smaller bowl to use for the crumb coat. That way, any crumbs from the spatula will only get mixed into the crumb coat frosting and not into the entire batch. Chilling the cake after applying the crumb coat is a good idea since the frosting will set more firmly. Then, the pretty final coat of frosting can be applied.

This version didn’t have the shredded coconut or crushed pineapple that I’ve become used to in a carrot cake, but I liked that leaving them out eliminated some sweetness. Mostly, I really liked the tender, crumbly texture and the flavor from the spices and nutty oat flour. It really was amazingly the opposite of dense given that it was a carrot cake. Kurt was very pleased with his choice as well, and I now have two favorite carrot cake recipes. 

I am a member of the Amazon Affiliate Program.

Carrot Cake Cookies

I should never have made these cookies. It was a very bad idea, and now I’m stuck with having eaten them. Ordinarily, I bake cookies and happily share them because they’re just cookies. Not so with these babies. Carrot cake cookies sandwiched together with cream cheese frosting do not get shared so much as they get devoured very, very quickly. These are from Martha Stewart's Cookies, and as I’ve said before, every cookie in that book looks similarly devourable.

These have all the things a carrot cake might have like grated fresh carrots, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and raisins. For no particular reason, I reduced the amount of raisins and added some chopped pecans. I guess if there were a reason, it would be that my favorite carrot cake recipe has nuts in it so I wanted some in these cookies too. Since they get sandwiched, it’s convenient if they’re all the same size. I used a small ice cream scoop to place the dough on the baking sheets in even-sized mounds. The recipe suggests chilling the dough before scooping, but chilled dough is more difficult to spoon out of the bowl. So, I placed the dough mounds on sheets, and then chilled the baking sheets before putting them in the oven.

The cream cheese frosting is basic, straightforward, and as delicious as it always is. Once these were filled with frosting and finished, I realized this would be the first cookie I would prefer to eat from the refrigerator. This is interesting because Kurt is a cold cookie kind of guy. Even chocolate chip. He prefers them straight from the refrigerator, and I don’t understand it. For me, chocolate chip cookies are only worth eating directly from the oven. The refrigerator doesn’t even enter the picture. But here, cream cheese frosting necessitates refrigeration. I can tell you that these are by far my favorite cold cookie, and I have many, many extra calories to burn this week.

Brown Sugar Pound Cake

Sweets: Soul Food Desserts and Memories is a gem of a book. Anecdotes included throughout the book clearly convey the warmth, happiness, and fun shared among an extended family and their community. The author has written about the women in her family, what excellent cooks they were, and how well known they were for their sweets. These ladies took equal pride in the orderliness of their homes and the quality of their desserts. There are so many desserts that I wanted to make as soon as I read about them. The meringue topped banana pudding, the peach cobbler, and the strawberry layer cake are all on my short list. But, the first cake I had to have was the brown sugar pound cake. This cake came from the author’s maternal grandmother.

I made just a couple of alterations to the ingredient list. I used all butter rather than a combination of butter and shortening, and I used AP flour since I didn’t have any cake flour on hand. Then, for the frosting, I used natural maple syrup instead of maple extract. The flour and baking powder get sifted together three times. The sifting process along with the five eggs in the recipe, ensure an amazing texture for this cake. It was impossible for it to be anything but fantastic, and well, it was just that.

As Kurt and I tasted our first pieces of the cake, we both just nodded in agreement. Wow. It was a buttery, brown sugary, pecan-filled, just really, really good pound cake with cream cheese, maple frosting. Read this book if you get a chance, and try this brown sugar pound cake. I can very highly recommend both.