Carrot Cake



Renee had asked if I had a carrot cake recipe, and I didn't but I love carrot cake.  So I thought it would be a great time to come up with a recipe.  Renee sent me a recipe she found on-line and I have modified it a bit.  One major change that I made was a reduction of the sweetener.  The original recipe Renee found had 1 1/2 cups of honey; way too much.  Pure honey is very expensive and that much is unnecessary.  I made a few other tweaks.

 

One tweak I had to make was to use some of my patty pan squash from my garden.  Since my latest experiments have been involving white patty pan squash, I decided to incorporate it into this recipe too.  The resulting carrot cake was quite tasty and moist.  I hope you like it.

 

 



Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour (2 cups soft white wheat berries, ground fine)

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp fine sea salt

1 stick butter, softened

1/2 cup honey

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups shredded carrots

1 cup shredded squash (patty pan or zucchini, peeled)

1 cup plain homemade kefir (or buttermilk)

2 large (or 3 small eggs), fork beaten

cream cheese frosting (below)

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 °F.  Combine dry ingredients in a bowl, set aside.  Cream butter and honey together.  Add vanilla, kefir and eggs to butter mixture.  Slow incorporate dry ingredients into wet.  Stir in shredded carrots and squash.

Butter and flour two 8" round cake pans.  Place half of batter into each and place in preheat oven.  Bake at 350 °F for 25 minutes or until center is set.  Remove from oven and let cool slightly.  Remove from pans and cool completely on cooling racks.  Can be prepared the night before or wrapped and frozen until ready to use.



Prepare icing and frost cake.  If you are not great at frosting cakes (like me) sprinkle chopped walnuts over the frosting to hide your mistakes and create a wonderful dessert.

Cream Cheese Frosting

1 stick sweet cream butter, softened

1 package cream cheese (8 oz), softened

3 Tbl pure raw honey

1 tsp vanilla

Whip together softened cream cheese and honey until smooth.  Add softened butter and vanilla.  Whip until smooth.