Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

How to bake the carrot sponge

1. Despite the long list of ingredients, carrot cake is very simple to make. My daughter and I made this dessert for my birthday. It turned out great! Baking the sponge is no trouble at all, and mixing store-bought cream cheese with powdered sugar takes a few minutes. The hard part is waiting for the cake to soak up the frosting.

   

2. Prepare the carrots, raisins and nuts. Peel the carrots and grate them on a fine grater. The pieces should be thin, almost translucent. It’s important that they have time to bake through. Soak the raisins in hot water for 10-15 mins. If you like, you can add a little aromatic liquor to the water. Then drain the water. Chop the walnuts for the sponge in a blender. In a large bowl combine the grated carrot, nuts and raisins and stir the mixture thoroughly with a spatula.

   

3. Beat the eggs with sugar and add the spices. Put the eggs into the mixer bowl, add the white sugar and beat to a loose foam. Grate the orange zest and add it to the eggs. Add 3 tbsp of brown sugar (41 g) and a pinch of salt, pour in the liquid vanilla, and add 0.5 tsp each of ground cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg. Melt the butter, without letting it get hot, and pour it into the mixer bowl.

   

4. Make the batter. Mix all the components thoroughly so they are evenly distributed. Add the baking powder. The amount is calculated for 0.5 kg of flour; the proportions are on the packet. People often recommend baking soda, but it’s very hard to guess the dose. By the way, for the carrot cake to be tall and the sponge not to sink, you can’t do without a leavening agent. Add the sifted flour and mix the batter thoroughly.

   

5. Combine the batter with the carrots. The batter should be a little runnier than usual. Keep in mind that the carrots and nuts make up almost half of the volume. Pour all the batter into the bowl with the carrots, raisins and nuts and mix thoroughly with a spatula. The carrot sponge batter is ready to bake.

   

6. Prepare the pan and preheat the oven to 180-190°C. Choose a large pan for the sponge batter; ours is 26 cm. It should be fairly deep, because the batter rises as it heats thanks to the baking powder and may spill over the edge. A springform pan is better, as it’s easier to remove the finished cake. Line the bottom of the pan with baking paper. Grease the paper and the sides with vegetable oil.

   

7. Pour all the batter into the pan, level the surface with a spatula and put it in the preheated oven. This kind of sponge is often described without a fixed baking time. There’s a lot of moist mass in the batter, since the carrot is very juicy. It takes a good while for the batter to heat through. Usually the baking time is more than 1 h. Then you need to check for doneness: pierce the sponge with a toothpick, and if no batter sticks to it, it’s done. The finished sponge is also springy when lightly pressed.

   

8. Cool the sponge and cut it into layers. If you like, you can simply turn off the heat and let the cake cool in the oven. That’s often done, and it improves the texture of the crumb. In any case, all further steps should be done with a cooled sponge. Take it out of the pan, put it on a board or plate and carefully cut it into layers with a large knife. We make two thick layers by cutting the cake in half. But if you like, cut it into more layers. Be careful, though: the crumb is very brittle and tears.

   

Preparing the frosting

1. Out of all the variety of frostings, we settled on the simplest and most accessible. Inexpensive cream cheese is sold in large tubs. It’s somewhat like Philadelphia cheese and is made from natural milk. On its own it’s very tasty and makes excellent sandwiches.

2. Mix the frosting. Put 750 g of cream cheese into the mixer bowl and add 3 heaped tbsp of powdered sugar (150 g) and liquid vanilla extract to taste. Mix with the mixer until completely smooth. Set aside 2-3 tbsp of the frosting for decorating the cake.

   

How to assemble the cake

1. It’s very convenient to spread the frosting on the layers on a rotating cake stand.

2. Put one layer on the stand and spread it generously with the finished frosting. The layer of frosting can be quite thick. Cream cheese doesn’t run, as it has no liquid components. So it will keep its shape practically intact even after the cake has soaked for a long time.

   

3. Put the second layer on the frosting, press it down lightly with your palms and coat the top and sides of the cake. Spread the top of the layer generously with frosting. You can use more than in the inner layer. Smooth the frosting with a spatula. Also coat the sides generously, where the layers show. Ideally the top and sides should be smooth.

   

4. Cover the cake with nuts. Grind the walnuts meant for decoration in a blender. Turning the stand, press the nuts onto the sides of the cake. The nuts should stick and be held by the frosting. You can press them on lightly with your palm. We sprinkled a narrow strip of nuts along the very edge of the top, leaving the frosting exposed only in the middle.

   

5. Decorate the carrot cake if you like. Usually, or rather almost always, people try to put something resembling a carrot on top. Why not? You can buy ready-made sugar or candied-fruit carrot decorations. We mixed a little of the finished frosting with a small amount of orange food coloring and piped a pattern with a pastry bag. We could have drawn a carrot, but decided to stick with sugar flowers and leaves.

   

6. Chill the cake in the refrigerator so it soaks. This is important and takes a long time, ideally overnight or even a full day. So it’s worth making the dessert ahead.

Serving

1. Serve the cake well chilled and fully soaked. Then juiciness, softness and excellent flavor are guaranteed. By the way, the cake can keep in the refrigerator for several days, if you have the willpower not to eat it right away.