Recipe: Killer Carrot Cake

RECIPE:  KILLER CARROT CAKE

This is much more than the standard "spice cake with a little carrot in it" recipe.  This is one of the moistest and tastiest carrot cakes you'll come across.  There's a couple of "technical notes" and optional prep steps, depending on what you're starting with.

Part 1:  Cake batter

4 eggs
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter, melted
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups cake flower
2 cups sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 cinnamon sticks OR 1 Tbsp ground cinnamon
8 cloves OR 1/4 tsp ground cloves
8 allspice berries OR 1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg (fresh is better than pre-ground)
5 large carrots, grated OR 4 cups of grated carrots
1 cup pecans, toasted (optional)
1/2 cup dried cranberries, cherries, or raisins

Part 2:  Cream cheese frosting

1 stick (8 oz) butter, softened at room temperature
2 packages (16 oz total) cream cheese, softened at room temperature
1 1/2 -- 2 cups powdered sugar (depending on taste)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Optional prep steps:

If you are starting with whole carrots, peel them and then grate them using either your food processor or cheese grater.  (I prefer the cheese grater, myself.)

If starting with whole spices, you'll need to grind them down to a powder.  You can do this with a mortar and pestle or a "coffee grinder" style grinder.  The nutmeg will be grated using a microplane or rasp-stylegrater -- about 12 "scrapes" will be plenty.

If you're using pecans, toast them by putting them into a skillet over medium-high eat.  Toss them every 30 seconds or so until you can just start to smell them.  Immediately remove the pan from the hot burner. Nuts will go from "toasted" to "burned and inedible" pretty quickly if you're not careful.

To make the cake:

Oil and flour two 9-inch cake pans.  Preheat the oven to 350 F.

With a mixer (stand or hand), beat the eggs until homogenous and frothy.  They don't need to increase in volume.  Leaving the beaters on, slowly drizzle in the oil and melted butter.  Go slowly; you're trying to emulsify everything so that it looks smooth.  This is a similar method if you were making mayo or Hollandaise sauce.  So long as you drizzle in the oil and butter slowly, you will end up with a nice smooth result.

TECH NOTE:  All these ingredients are made up of mostly two things:  oil and water.   Now, oil and water mix like...well, oil and water.  In order to make a smooth mixture of the two, you need another type of substance called an "emulsifier."  This makes the oil and water play nice and make a nice smooth blend.  I won't go into lots of detail about this, but egg yolks have lots of emulsifiers in them.

Mix the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and spices together.  This can be done either by sifting them all together, pulsing them together in a food processor, or by putting them into a bowl and whisk them together for a few seconds.

Add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture and stir them until it just comes together.  Note:  This will be a very thick batter -- almost like a cookie dough.  Don't worry about that just yet.    Add the carrots and any nuts and/or dried fruit to the mixture, and fold them in carefully.  If you over-stir the batter, you run the risk of developing glutens and making the cake tough.

Equally divide the batter between the two cake pans.  Put the cake pans into the oven and bake for 15 minutes.  Rotate the cake pans (i.e., swap their places with each other).  Cook for another 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Cool the cakes in the pans for 10 minutes.  De-pan them, and allow them to cool completely before frosting.

To make the frosting:

Beat the butter and cream cheese together until smooth.  Turn off the beaters and add the powdered sugar to the mixture.  Beat on low speed until mostly incorporated, then crank up the speed until smooth.  add the vanilla and beat together.

TECH NOTE:  Powdered sugar is more than just finely ground sugar.  There is also a little corn starch in there to help keep it from clumping together.

When the cake is cool, move one layer to a cake plate and put about 1/2 cup of the frosting on top of it.  Smooth it down and then put the other layer on top of it.  From here, put about 1/2 cup of frosting on top of the other cake, and smooth it down over the sides.  You're trying to make a very thin coating of frosting over the cake (i.e., a "crumb coat".  This will help the finished product look cleaner in the end).

Chill for about an hour, or until the crumb coat is firm.  Take the cake out of the refrigerator and put the rest of the frosting on the top of the cake.  From the top, smooth it down, pushing some of the frosting over the sides.  (Note:  Feel free to remove excess frosting as you go, but it's a lot easier to take off extra frosting than to add more and end up with a nice-looking cake in the end.)  Smooth the sides.  Chill for another hour or so, until set.