The Baker’s Dozen – Perian’s Carrot Cake

 

La tarta de zanahoria está de moda, por eso te vamos a dar la mejor receta en inglés, para que sorprendas a todos tus amigos.

Welcome back to The Baker’s Dozen and to a New Year.  The start of a new year is always seen as the start of new beginnings when people start to think about what they can change over the coming year.  It’s around this time people start to make New Year’s resolutions. I know that I have had the same one for a few years and you can see how successful I’ve been when you consider I am still making it.  Yes, it’s the resolution we all make after the excesses of Christmas – it’s time to lose weight: Hola operación bikini!

Now as we all know cakes don’t really fit into a diet plan as they are most certainly not low in calories and for the most part are not seen as healthy…….or are they?  One of my colleagues only recently tried today’s recipe as he had consistently refused in the past as he thought it sounded far too healthy to be tasty. And my husband was never keen to try it as, ‘it just didn’t sound right’.  Both myself and my daughter love this cake and have enjoyed completing a survey on the best ones available in the cafés here in Barcelona.  The only problem is that we can’t remember which is the best one, so what a shame that we have to start all over again.  I like to think that this is a healthy cake, so it really can be part of a diet and for my youngest daughter who is not keen on vegetables, she thinks that a piece of this cake is the equivalent of a portion of vegetables –  I like her thinking. So here we have a recipe for carrot cake.

I have to confess that I have never made this cake; every time I have mentioned it my eldest daughter has taken over from me in the kitchen as she loves to make it and I have become just the kitchen assistant. This recipe was given to me by one of our teachers; many thanks Perian, it’s a great recipe.  The following measurements are American.

Carrot Cake

1½ cups sugar

1 cup vegetable or sunflower oil

3 large eggs

2 cups flour (if you use self raising flour then do not add baking soda)

1½ tsps ground cinnamon

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp vanilla

½ tsp salt

¼ tsp nutmeg

3 cups finely shredded/grated carrot

1. Heat the oven to 180ºc.  Grease the bottom and sides of rectangular cake tin with vegetable or sunflower oil (DO NOT use olive oil).
2. Mix sugar, oil and eggs in a large bowl until blended; beat for about 1 minute.  Stir in the remaining ingredients except the carrots.  Beat for about 1 minute. Stir in the carrots.
3. Place the mixture into the cake tin and then bake in the oven for about 40 to 50 minutes, or until a knife is inserted and comes out clean.  Cool completely until the cake reaches room temperature and is ready for the cream cheese frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

200g Philadelphia cream cheese

½ cup butter

2 tsps vanilla

250g powder sugar

1. In a large mixing bowl beat the cream cheese, butter and vanilla with an electric mixer until light and fluffy.
2. Gradually beat in the powder sugar to reach a spreading consistency
3. Spread the frosting over the cake, cover with plastic wrap and place it in the fridge. It does make a lot of frosting and we have cut the recipe in half as it was too much for us; alternatively cut the cake in half and place some frosting in between as well.
4. When the cake is cold, the plastic wrap will come off clean.

Vocabulary

Resolution: a promise that you make to yourself to do something; e.g. my New Year’s resolution is to do more exercise.

To take over: to replace someone or something or to take control (phrasal verb)

Self-raising flour: flour that already has the baking agent added to it (harina de bizcocho)

Tsp: teaspoon, it’s used to stir tea or coffee but as a measurement it is equivalent to 5ml or about 5g.

Cinnamon: a spice which is a brown powder made from the bark of a tropical tree (canela)

Bark: the hard outer covering of a tree

Baking soda: a white powder used to make foods rise when they are baked (levadura)

Nutmeg: a spice which is a brown powder made from the hard fruit of a tropical tree (nuez moscada)

Finely shredded (US) / Grated (UK): food that has been rubbed against a grater to cut it into small thin strips.

Cake tin: the mould that you use to cook your cake in.

Grater: a device having a surface covered with holes edged by slightly raised cutting edges (ralladora)

Powder sugar: azúcar glasé – icing sugar (UK)

Beat: the action to mix together ingredients vigorously

Plastic wrap: thin transparent material used for wrapping food to keep it fresh.