Carrot Cake - Easy, Moist, and Tasty

Hi, folks.👋 It's been a while. I hope you're all doing well and cooking up good food and good trouble. 

I've been writing regularly again for my new project, Feed Your Fight: Recipes for Resistance and I figured, why not post something new to the 'ol Garden of Eating, too? 

So here goes! Warning that this post twists and turns through my journey to avoid wasting food before leaving on a vacation but I will ultimately get to the carrot cake recipe, promise. If you get impatient, though, you can click here to skip right to the recipe.

Recently, thanks to a stupendous supermarket brain fart, I found myself with not one, but two, enormous bags of carrots. With a trip looming, I went into overdrive, trying to figure out how to use them up. 

Am I the only one out there whose pre-travel anxiety manifests in attempting to use up all perishable food and making sure the house is clean? After years of navel-gazing, I've realized that some part of me assumes I may never return from the trip due to succumbing to an unfortunate accident while I'm away and that I'd hate for anyone to a) judge my housekeeping as lacking, or b) have to deal with a messy house or rotting food. It's nuts, I realize, but there you have it. Join me on this anxiety-fueled ride that resulted in some tasty things and very little food waste.

Inspired by both an Ottolenghi recipe I spotted in the Guardian and a recipe in Anne-Marie's great new book, The Zero Waste Chef Cookbook, I started by making a big pot of ribollita - a first for me but one which I will repeat as it was so delicious.  

This hearty Italian peasant soup is a perfect way to clean-out-your-fridge. In went half a jar of tomato sauce, some celery, a couple of onions that weren't getting any younger, a small amount of fresh thyme leftover from making this lovely Provencal vegetable tian, a potato whose skin had turned green, a big bunch of the aforementioned carrots, and a jar of dried white beans that had been gracing a shelf in the pantry for a while. I topped each bowl with toasted stale bread croutons and grated cheddar cheese that would otherwise have ended up in the compost pile. 

It was really good! But after we'd licked our bowls clean, there were still a shit ton of carrots left in the crisper. Back to the drawing board.

Next, I made a big dish of tzimmes to bring to a Passover seder, using up more carrots along with some dried prunes leftover from my younger son making chicken marbella - my favorite recipe from The Silver Palate Cookbook, and some dried apricots leftover from my older son making these apricot ginger scones, along with the juice of several blood oranges that had clearly reached the end of the line. The tzimmes was delicious! 

Unfortunately, a gang of carrots was still jockeying for space in the crisper. 

I found my third and final source of inspiration came in the form of this recipe for carrot cupcakes that Lindsay shared in a recent Pinch of Yum email. 

WHY NOT BAKE A CARROT CAKE?! 

In addition to using up more carrots, the frosting for this cake also used up a package of cream cheese, a bit of heavy cream, and the zest and juice of an orange that had been languishing in the fridge. And it was delicious...

Out of habit and a little bit of laziness, I turned to the recipe in The Joy of Cooking since this much-spattered and broken-spined volume rests in state in the cookbook holder on my counter. 

As I remembered from the last time I made it, this carrot cake is moist and very tasty. I hope you enjoy it. My version omitted both the raisins and the walnuts as they are disliked by members of my family but if your loved onest enjoy them, go for it!

After all those months of dark and cold, this is a perfect sweet treat to celebrate the return of the sun and flowers, and green growing things. And bunnies. Let's not forget the bunnies.🐇

CARROT CAKE (adapted a teeny bit from The Joy of Cooking)
Makes one two layer cake, serves 12

Ingredients

For the cake

• 1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour 
• 2/3 cup vegetable oil 
• 3 large eggs  
• 1 1/2 cups peeled and finely grated carrots  
• 1 cup walnuts, finely chopped (optional) 
• 1 cup golden raisins (optional) 
• 1 cup cane sugar 
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda 
• 1 tsp baking powder 
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon 
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves 
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg 
• 1/2 tsp ground allspice 
• 1/2 tsp sea salt

For the frosting

• 8 ozs cream cheese
• 5 Tbsps softened butter
• 2 tsps vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 cups powdered icing sugar
• 1-2 tsps freshly grated lemon or orange zest

Directions

1. Have all ingredients at room temperature, 68°F to 70°F. 
2. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two 9×2-inch round pans or two 8×8-inch pans or one 13×9-inch pan, or line the bottom with wax paper. 
3. In a large bowl, throroughly whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, all-spice, and salt. 
4. Add the vegetable oil and eggs, and stir together well with a rubber spatula or beat on low speed. Stir in the carrots, walnuts, and raisins (if using). 
5. Scrape the batter into the pans(s) and spread evenly. 
6. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. 
7. Remove from the oven and cool for a few minutes, until you can handle with ease, then unmold the cakes, turn them out onto a rack and allow to cool fully. 
8. Make the frosting. Beat the cream cheese in a medium bowl with the butter and vanilla until combined. Gradually add the powdered sugar, adding more until you reach a consistency and sweetness that fits your taste. Beat in the citrus zest.
9. Frost and fill the cakes with the cream cheese frosting. 

Join me over on Substack for food for thought

 Hi folks,

I'm adding Substack as an outlet to share my thoughts that are more food for thought than thoughts on food. I hope you'll join me over there.

You can find my inaugural Substack post, Solace & Solidarity here.

Sending you all my best in these unprecedentedly divisive times,

Eve

P.S. I should hopefully have a thoughts on food-style post to share with you soon about making black currant liqueur aka creme de cassis.

Preserving the Fall Harvest & 2 Big Improvements To the Canning Kitchen

It's been a while! Just wanted to say hello 👋and share some great ways to make use of fall's bounty.

Despite the weird weather, we've had a very good tomato year in our garden. There's been some blight but we've managed to minimize it by mulching well with crushed straw, fertilizing a few times, and trimming all the affected leaves and branches off. And the wasps have mostly been keeping up with the dreaded tomato hornworms. We planted two Sungolds, a purple Cherokee, an heirloom beefsteak, and six Amish paste tomato plants that local farmer Jay of Four Winds Farm swears by for making sauce. They have produced a ton of fruits. 🍅

I'm excited to share two big improvements here in the Garden of Eating kitchen.

1. Induction Stove
Last winter, we made the decision to swap our propane gas kitchen stove out for an induction cooktop and oven. I was a bit hesitant at first since I abhor electric stoves but am happy to report that it's been a real gamechanger and is nothing like cooking on an electric stove. One of the perks is that it's cut the time required to boil water and heat things in half - a real boon for canning projects! And there's no more noxious gas smell from the cooktop or oven (we had both.) It's also very easy to clean. And we're producing a lot fewer greenhouse gas emissions since most of our electricity comes from our solar array. Although I was drooling over this gorgeous AGA stove (maybe someday), we ended up getting this far more affordable Samsung model. Regardless of whether you can afford the high or low-end version, I highly recommend making the switch to an induction range—it's a big improvement over cooking with gas.

2. Ditched the Plastic Funnel
Given what I now know about all the toxic chemicals used in plastics from my job at Beyond Plastics and the likelihood of said chemicals leeching into food in the presence of heat, I've also swapped out my plastic canning funnel for a set of stainless steel funnels. I feel much better not pouring boiling food through a plastic funnel.

Now for the recipes!

Garlic Herb Tomato Sauce To Freeze
In July, I made a few quarts of roasted tomato, garlic and herb sauce and froze them for future meals.  Core and cut up the tomatoes, toss them with fresh herbs (I used basil and oregano), and whole cloves of garlic and bake on sheet trays at 300°F for a few hours, moving them around a few times to prevent uneven cooking. Once everything is cooked down into a soft, mellow mess, remove any herb stems, transfer to a pot and use an immersion blender to blend until it reaches your desired consistency. If you don't have an immersion blender, you can blend the sauce in batches in your blender or food processor until you acquire one of these magical devices (trust me, you will love this thing!) Add salt, pepper and perhaps a bit of sugar to taste. Let it cool and ladle it into glass jars (or another freezer-safe container of your choice) and freeze. 

Variations

• If you prefer jarred sauce to frozen, try my recipe for simple tomato sauce (canned). 
• Or, you can skip the sauce making step and just make these delicious roasted tomatoes with garlic and herbs to use now or freeze them without blending at all. They're so good!

Heirloom Tomato Salsa
I've made and canned several batches of Aunt Maggie's salsa because it's so much tastier than jarred store-bought salsa. Made with fresh tomatoes, garlic, onions, jalapenos, cilantro, salt, vinegar and sugar, this recipe is delightfully unfussy because you blend it all prior to cooking. Recipe and canning directions here.

Crushed or Whole Peeled Tomatoes
I've also made quarts of plain old crushed tomatoes to have on hand to add to soups and stews this winter or to use as the base for tomato sauces. Our younger son discovered penne a la vodka during the pandemic so that's now in our semi-regular rotation :) Ball Canning Book's recipe here. You can, of course, also freeze crushed tomatoes if you prefer a quicker, less labor-intensive method of preserving.

If you prefer whole tomatoes to crushed, check out my instructions for canning whole peeled tomatoes. I'd say they require the same amount of labor since you have to remove the peels, something I don't bother doing for crushed.

Today, I plan to make and can a batch of pizza sauce with the latest round of 'maters from the garden. I'll try to share the recipe for that soon.

Applesauce
It will soon be time to switch to making applesauce—a project I always liked but enjoy roughly 1000 times more since we bought this simple apple peeler/corer/slicer combo tool five years ago. It feels like cheating but I don't care. Latkes, here we come!

My recipe and canning instructions for easy cinnamon applesauce are here.

I hope you're all doing well - that the weather in your neck of the woods is not too extreme, that those of you with kids are enjoying a smooth start to the school year and appreciating the return of a solid routine, that you're watching a great show or reading (or listening to) a great book, and that you're finding moments of joy, fun and peace in this rollercoaster we call life.

You might also like:

Tomato Soup

20 Terrific Tomato Recipes

Preserving Fresh Herbs