Okay, for those of you who are born in Asia, this might be slightly confusing. So, what recipe am I talking about exactly? It’s the sweet carrot cake. This type of carrot cake was thought to originate from somewhere in Europe: either England, France or Switzerland.

The most modern carrot cake now is mostly known to be paired with a cream cheese frosting and this happens to be the type of carrot cake that I grew up with. It’s sweet and warm, but filled with the many flavours from all the spices, and yet subtly countered with the amazing cream cheese frosting on top.

In this recipe, the carrot cake does contain actual carrots. Weird? Maybe. But one thing’s for sure, it’s delicious! It’s a moist, fluffy, tender cake that goes so well with cream cheese frosting. This basic flavour of carrot cake contains many spices. The most common spices used are cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, nutmeg and many more. Some people add other ingredients to their carrot cake, most commonly walnuts and raisins. If you were blindfolded, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t even know if the carrot was one of the main ingredients.

This carrot cake recipe I developed does not contain many spices or any other extra ingredients. I wanted to make a simple carrot cake that everyone can make at home with the most common ingredients. In this recipe, it only contains cinnamon powder and freshly grated ginger as the basic spice.

This carrot cake recipe does contain buttermilk so please refer back to my scone recipe on the steps to making your buttermilk at home. Remember that 240 ml of milk + 1 tbsp of white vinegar/lemon juice is the main ratio. I do prefer using vinegar instead of lemon juice since the taste is fairly neutral.

The method of this particular cake will start like making a sponge cake, but we will add the ingredients like how we would make when making a butter cake. This carrot cake recipe also does not contain butter but uses oil instead. When oil is used in a recipe instead of butter, it makes the cake more tender and moist. But the type of oil used is also very important to the texture of the cake. The types of oils you can use in this carrot cake recipe are grapeseed and coconut (not virgin coconut oil). You may also use olive oil but the taste will most likely be overpowered by the olive oil itself.

As for the cream cheese frosting, I wanted it to be light and airy, so I used whipped cream for this carrot cake. Since cream cheese is already thick and heavy on its own, I needed an ingredient to counter that heavy structure, which can be solved by pairing it with whipped cream.

This carrot cake is super light and moist, almost like a sponge cake texture. Moreover, carrot cake can be eaten at any time of the day, whether for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Nevertheless, this is best to eat during the day since a lot of people eat it for a noon-time snack along with their cup of coffee/tea.

Additional Notes from Author:

• Sometimes ginger juices can burn your skin, so be careful when working with freshly grated ginger. Use gloves or utensils and don’t let them touch directly to your skin.
• Cold cream is important so that the structure of the frosting won’t collapse.

Some terms you might need to know:

• ribbon consistency