Harriet’s How To – Carrot Cake

HARRIET’S HOW TO

Kiwi Carrot Cake

WORDS HARRIET BOUCHER | IMAGES BRYDIE THOMSPON

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: SARAH TUCK, RUTH PRETTY, ANNABELLE LANGBEIN, DIGBY LAW, LITTLE & FRIDAY

Sarah Tuck’s Big Bad Carrot Cake was my gateway into what I would now deem my favourite cake flavour. I had turned my nose up at the idea of carrot cake my whole life, because why on earth would you put veggies in a cake? Now I’ve been converted thanks to my matured palate and a bit of peer pressure.

Many debates have ensued since I embarked on my quest to find the best carrot cake recipe. Whole meal or plain flour? Is it a sin to stray away from cream cheese icing? Does pineapple have a place in carrot cake? Walnuts: rancid or requisite? Annoyingly, a lot of those answers are personal preference, but I have toiled to find the perfect balance. A good carrot cake, in my opinion, needs to have a great level of spice, allow the carrot to shine through, have savoury notes and make you say “mmmm that’s so moist”. The icing should complement the cake and not overpower it; getting a good balance of sweetness is key.

DIGBY LAW:

When the legendary Denise Irvine heard I was researching carrot cakes, she was quick to pass on her favourite recipe from the late Digby Law. Digby was a selftaught cook, known as the “high priest of vegetables”. Most carrot cakes have oil, flour, sugar, eggs, spice and carrots as their base ingredients, using different sugar/flour varieties, spice mixes and additions to achieve different results. Digby’s was no exception, using peanut oil, raw sugar, wholemeal flour and walnuts. With an easy-to-follow method, it felt like what I would imagine it to be, a no fuss 80s recipe. The cake cooked true to the recipe and had a savoury wholemeal aroma fresh out of the oven. The icing was a fat-heavy 250g of cream cheese, ¾ cup of icing sugar, vanilla and a smidge of butter, beaten together until smooth. I made this simultaneously with Sarah Tuck’s; it wasn’t as visually appealing, but it was incredibly moist with pleasant savoury notes. The icing needed to be balanced with citrus and a bit more sweetness, especially when compared to its competitor. Much to my surprise, I loved the walnuts and wholemeal flour in this cake. The peanut oil wasn’t worth making a special trip to the supermarket for, and if I’m being picky, it needed more spice.

SARAH TUCK:

Sarah Tuck, Dish magazine editor, has two versions of her Big Bad Carrot Cake; one in her book Coming Unstuck and one online. I have always used the latter of these two versions and going into this, I knew it would be hard to beat. She uses a typical carrot cake base with 100% plain flour, a mix of brown and caster sugar, mixed spice and cinnamon, pineapple, orange zest and optional walnuts. I opted out of using walnuts, so I could compare it with Digby’s walnut-containing cake. Sarah blitzes her carrot, eggs, oil and zest in a food processor to combine. As someone who hates washing her food processor, this loses points in my book. The joy of carrot cake is that you just mix the dry ingredients with the wet and voila. Sarah’s cake has warm spice shining through, and I love the bits of pineapple which add extra sweetness and moisture. It’s a lighter cake, due to using plain flour, but when comparing it directly to Digby’s, I appreciated his use of wholemeal. While I had made this cake before, this was my first time trying it with her icing recipe. The orange cream cheese frosting has 3 cups of icing sugar to 250 grams of cream cheese, making it four times sweeter than Digby’s. Even after generously icing the cake, there was lots of icing left. She suggests freezing the leftover icing, but I would expect an icing recipe to cover a cake perfectly with just enough left to lick the bowl.

LITTLE AND FRIDAY:

Little and Friday, owned by Kim Evans, was always a must-stop on our shopping trips in Newmarket when it was inside Martha’s Fabrics. There was always a bounty of cakes, pastries, pies and sweets to choose from. Their carrot cake recipe

caught my eye as it strayed away from tradition with the addition of chocolate, chopped dates, crystalised ginger and candied orange peel. The orange peel recipe was a two-day process and for only needing two tablespoons of this, I didn’t bother and used the zest of an orange instead. I did, however, go to the effort of making candied carrot strips to decorate, which I wouldn’t rush to do again. I embarrassingly undercooked this cake when I made it for the trial. I kept hitting melted chocolate with my skewer so mistook this for the rest of the cake being cooked. I was wrong. I “saved” it by cutting the cake horizontally, scooping out the middle then smothering it in the fat-heavy cream cheese icing. You never would have known if I didn’t tell you. The extra additions to this carrot cake were a miss. The nutmeg was overpowering and clashed with the chocolate. The dates and measly one tablespoon of crystalised ginger were lost and the carrot disappeared among the chaos. As far as a kiwi classic carrot cake goes, this wasn’t it.

ANNABEL LANGBEIN:

Annabel Langbein is one of my cooking idols and I often refer to her recipes for inspiration. I used An Excellent Carrot Cake from The Best of Annabel Langbein. She uses a blend of wholemeal and plain flour, gives you the option of raw or white sugar and is heavy handed on the cinnamon, mixed spice and ginger. All the ingredients get blitzed together in a food processor, then it asks you to fold in two teaspoons of baking soda dissolved in one tablespoon of orange juice. Seeing as there is no use of the zest in the cake or the rest of the orange, it seemed like a waste of an orange. You didn’t even have to line the tin for this cake, it was very quick to get in the oven! The cream cheese icing had FOUR cups of icing sugar in it, as well as the zest and juice of a lemon, 75g of butter and 250g of cream cheese. There was an excessive amount leftover, almost enough for two cakes. The cake itself was very moist but sweetness dominated the whole experience, especially with that icing. By the time I had made this one, I knew I preferred a savoury leaning carrot cake. Ruth Pretty is well known for her highend catering and cook school on the Kapiti Coast. I chose her recipe from the Great New Zealand Cook Book, as my theme for this How To is Kiwi chefs. Ruth used millilitres/grams to measure her ingredients, which is one of Vicki’s pet peeves for a recipe designed for home cooks. There was a lot going on in this cake with vanilla, lemon zest, apple, coconut, pineapple and its juice, along with the usual base ingredients. The method was simple and quick, just how it should be. The icing had equal quantities of cream cheese and icing sugar, with 10g of butter, lemon juice and zest. It was quite a sloppy-thin icing and once again, there was a lot leftover. In the picture, Ruth covered her whole cake and then piped swirls on the top so had I done this, it may have used all the icing up, but it wasn’t thick enough to pipe. Amongst the pineapple, apple and coconut, the carrot gets lost in this cake. It was lacking in spice with only one teaspoon of cinnamon. If I wasn’t being picky on the perfect carrot cake, this would have been delicious, but it didn’t fit the mould of what I am looking for.

Back when I first made a carrot cake for a photo shoot, I needed a thick and stable icing, so I used a Swiss meringue buttercream. After trialling five cakes, all with cream cheese icing, something still led me back to the salty-sweet Swiss meringue. I attempted a blend of the two and for my final recipe, have landed on a Swiss meringue-cream cheese buttercream (it’s a mouthful). I was cocky and added a chef’s pinch of salt into my first trial; do NOT make this mistake, a tiny pinch creates the perfect balance. As for the cake, my love of Sarah Tuck’s remained strong, but I have blended the plain flour with wholemeal, upped the spice and carrot volume, added vanilla, the juice of the zested orange and made the walnuts compulsory (although I won’t know if you don’t use them). Sarah also uses a 26cm cake tin which makes for quite a flat cake, so I have used a 23cm tin which gives great height, it just takes a little longer to cook.

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Carrot Cake

WITH SWISS MERINGUE CREAM CHEESE BUTTERCREAM

CAKE

1½ cups plain flour 1 cup wholemeal flour ²⁄³ cup caster sugar 1 cup brown sugar 1 tsp baking soda 1½ tsp mixed spice 2 tsp cinnamon ¼ tsp nutmeg ¼ tsp all spice ½ teaspoon salt 3 large carrots, grated (about 3 cups) 4 eggs 1¼ cups rice bran or other neutral vegetable oil 1 tsp vanilla extract finely grated zest and juice of 1 orange 227g tin of crushed pineapple in juice, strained ²⁄³ cup roughly chopped walnuts We used gorgeous calendula petals to decorate our iced cake.

23cm cake tin, lined with baking paper

ICING

2 egg whites (Size 7 Otaika Valley free range eggs) ½ cup sugar 165g butter, cubed (room temp) 165g cream cheese (room temp) small pinch of salt ½ tsp vanilla bean paste

Preheat the oven to 160˚C. Sift all the dry ingredients together into a large bowl and whisk to combine (tip in the wholemeal flour flakes that won’t go through the sieve).

In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs lightly, then add in the oil, vanilla, zest and juice, carrot and pineapple. Stir to combine, then fold into the dry ingredients, along with the walnuts. Spoon into the prepared tin and bake for 80–85 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Remove from the oven and ice once cooled.

ICING

Whisk the egg whites and sugar over a double boiler where the water is just simmering, until the sugar has dissolved, and the mix is starting to heat up. It’s easiest to test this by dipping your fingers in and rubbing them together. If you can still feel granules, keep whisking, if it is smooth and warm, it’s good to go. Transfer this mix to a stand mixer and whisk on high until the meringue is completely stiff and has cooled to at least body temperature. Once the meringue is stiff, start adding in the butter one cube at a time. Once this is fully incorporated, the mix should be thick and fluffy. Now start adding the cream cheese, small spoonfuls at a time. Once the cream cheese is fully incorporated, add a small pinch of salt and the vanilla, then spread onto the carrot cake. Note: Swiss meringue buttercream can have a tendency to split. Take it slow when adding the butter and cream cheese.

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