With or without the icing, this is enticing. (That worked well.) I love to bake carrot cake—it never fails to please. While my kids asked me “what is this green stuff in here” when I presented a perfect (well, my version of perfect, anyway) zucchini cake, I realized carrot cake was the preferred alternative. Filling for quick dessert, as an after-shopping revival food, after-school energy source, or best of all, a holiday surprise, gingerbread cake is too pretty to eat until after the 25th and do we really have to talk about fruitcakes?
This is an unbelievably simple recipe for a hybrid bread/cake that’s so delicious, it’s guaranteed to be gone in under a day; in other words, your end result will be so good, you’ll slice a piece and a line will seem to form in your kitchen. Don’t even think about “grating” the carrots the old-fashioned way; I don’t know about you but when a recipe calls for “grating,” my fingers are the only thing that get “grated.”
- 3 cups carrots
- 4 eggs
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 cups flour
- 2-3 tsp. cinnamon (depending on your taste)
- 2 tsp. baking soda
- 1½ cups vegetable oil or corn oil
- 1 stick of butter (cut down on the butter if you’re watching calories and cholesterol; otherwise, the old-fashioned way, “Butter is better” will make a great carrot cake even richer)
- 1 tsp. salt
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees
- Use a food processor (Cuisinart or otherwise) to shred carrots into the finest pieces possible
- Beat 4 eggs completely, until they are a thin yellow liquid
- Grease loaf pan with vegetable oil or butter
- Pour enough flour into loaf pan and then move pan around until the edges show the pan is “caked” with flour thoroughly
- Combine eggs with sugar and vegetable or corn oil; this should be a creamy consistency
- Make a flour mixture out of the 2 cups of flour, 1 tsp. salt and cinnamon
- Combine the flour mixture with the egg and sugar mixture
- Add carrot shreds into the thick mixture slowly, folding with a spatula
A bread pan will require 45 minutes. 30-35 minutes should be enough if you’re using a square or round flat pan.
Cool for about ten minutes, then take from pan and allow to finish cooling. The kitchen should smell divine; anyone with an appetite will want to “inhale” the carrot cake/bread.
If icing is desired, my mother’s recipe from years and years ago skimps on doing it homemade. Just pick up “white” or “vanilla” icing (Shhhh! No one will know!) from a can will dress this up into more of a cake. If you’re thinking of this carrot confection as a bread, simply skip the icing.
