I had a serious craving for cake (no surprise there), but I decided to have a nice carrot cake, so I could pretend I was being healthy. In my quests of late to cut back on sugar, I’ve continued my intrigue with older recipes (pre-1950s) when cakes/muffins/cookies weren’t quite as sweet as they are now–at least in the U.S. In reality, if you pull down a Euro-Baking book, you’ll definitely get recipes with minute amounts of sugar—which I quite enjoy.
I pulled down one of my favorites, The Best Light Recipe, to review the ingredients. However, I felt it still had too much sugar. Each night that I’m at the gym, I pass the time by watching an episode of Alton Brown on the Food Network; great knowledge and entertainment. Recently, he had done a carrot cake recipe, which is probably what sparked this whole thing…so, I flipped to his recipe.
Comparing the two, they were amazingly similar with only two exceptions: CI had more carrots, AB had less sugar. Success! I combined their efforts and I am delighted with the results!
My suggestions for change
- Use one pound of carrots
- Use a 9 x 13 cake pan (the double-layer 9″ took seemingly forever to bake)
- I grated the carrots by hand
- I used my KitchenAid mixer (too lazy to pull out the food processor)
- Use the same weight of flour, but King Arthur Flour Organic 100% White Whole Wheat
Giver her a try and report back!