Carrot Cake
Honey-sweetened carrot cake. More rustic than some, but delicious and moist. The cake is fairly sweet, so the frosting is deliberately not too sweet.
Servings: 1 9" 2 layer cake
Ingredients
Prepare and set aside:
- 3 C finely grated carrot
- .5 C golden raisins or try chopped dried apricots!
- 1 C chopped pecans
Sift and set aside:
- 2 C flour all-purpose or cake flour
- 2 t cinnamon
- 2 t baking powder
- 2 t baking soda
- 1 t salt
- .25 t mace (the outside of the nutmeg)
Wet Ingredients
- 4 eggs room temp bring eggs to temp in warm water, if required.
- 1 C melted butter substitute cooking oil for dairy-free
- 1.25 C warm honey Honey *must* be warm, but not hot
Instructions
Before you start:
- Grate the carrots using a fine setting. Preheat oven to 250.
- Chop the pecans -- large pieces will make cutting the cake hard, but you do want to know there are nuts in it.
- Sift together the dry ingredients and set aside.
- Grease and flour two 8" or 9" cake rounds.
- Preheat oven to 350.
Prepare batter
- Beat room-temp eggs for 1 minute, until fluffy, then add butter.
- Beat warm honey in for 3 minutes, until very light and fluffy.
- When the wet ingredients have been beaten they should be fluffy and have doubled or tripled in volume.
- Lightly fold 1/3 of dry ingredients into wet ingredients. Repeat with remaining thirds. When lumps are mostly gone, fold in the carrots, raisins and pecans.
Baking
- Spoon into pans gently, smooth surface and bake at 350 for 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean and the top is springy.
- Let cool in pan for 15 minutes, then turn onto rack and cool completely.
- Split each layer in two and fill with cream cheese frosting. Use a very small amount between layers (2-4T) and the rest to frost the cake.