Back to basics

What it took me way too long to discover is that very often the simplest recipes are the best versions of whatever the food might be. This is one of those recipes. Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, without all the nonsense additions like pineapple, raisins, or nuts. Who needs all of that in carrot cake?

Technically, this isn't Big Sis's recipe. I think Mom found it in a community cookbook back in the early 70s but it was an immediate family favorite--so much so that when Big Sis got married, she requested that this be the cake served at her wedding in lieu of the more traditional fruitcake layer. So I associate it with her. Which is why I'm putting the recipe in this blog, since I made it today and it always makes me think of Big Sis.

A friend of mine invited me to a potluck party for tonight and told me the theme was diner food. And I immediately said "I'll bring carrot cake!" See, I have this horrible kitchen. One of those galley jobs where if there's two people in it at the same time, you're probably doing something that's illegal in Texas. Hardly any counter space and due to an ancient and decrepit fluorescent ceiling fixture that died a year or so ago and which I haven't gotten around to hiring somebody to replace, hardly any light, either. So anymore, I either have to be really, really motivated to bake or it has to be super easy. I haven't been so motivated lately, so easy won out.

Now having said that, this isn't a box mix. You're making a cake from scratch. But it's unlikely to fall and I haven't had one fail yet, and trust me, if anybody can get a simple cake to fail, it's me. So give it a shot. It was a big hit at the party and the competition there was pretty stiff as it included warm homemade apple pie.

French Carrot Cake
I have no idea what makes it French. I've vaguely wondered about that for years, but not enough to ever bother looking it up.

Preheat your oven to 350.

2 c sugar
4 eggs
1 c vegetable oil
Mix the above together with a whisk. I generally use canola, use whatever, only avoid oils with really strong flavors.

2 c flour (if you want, you can make half the flour whole wheat)
3 t cinnamon (I usually go higher)
2 t soda
1 t salt
Mix the dry ingredients together and whisk into the wet ingredients above.

Add and mix in with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula:
3 c grated carrots
2 t cider vinegar
Quick note: don't bother with the pre-shredded carrots. You're looking for the small grate size which also probably means your food processor grater disk isn't eligible either. If you've got one of those multi sided metal graters, one side is probably the normal size grater and one side looks to be about half that size. Use that smaller side. I think I originally went for the smaller size when I reasoned that if I tried to remove skin while grating whatever produce, the smaller side would take off less flesh. What I discovered was that when I switched to the smaller grate size, I hardly ever caught my knuckles on it anymore and not only that, the smaller size shreds of carrots improved the texture of the cake tremendously. Go figure.

Oh and esthetics tip: I wear nitrile gloves while grating carrots mainly to keep my palms from being stained orange for 3 days.

By the way, if you're not accustomed to purchasing carrots, what you're looking for are ones that aren't very flexible. If they're bendy, don't bother. Oh, and after years of making this recipe, I've got the carrot selection down pat. 4 large carrots almost always work out to just about 3 c of grated carrot. I had a few years there where I kept getting confused as to whether it was 4 carrots or 5 and then I finally worked it out: see, I had this dog that loved fresh carrots. But while Anitra loved carrots, she would only eat cleaned ones so she tended to pay a little too close of attention to the sound of a peeler applied to a carrot. Unless I wanted her attempting to climb into the mixing bowl (she was a 50 lb Norwegian Elkhound) I had to buy and clean the 5th carrot to keep her occupied while I was working with the rest. Hence the confusion for the first few years after her death--I was so used to buying 5 carrots that I couldn't quite remember that I only needed 4 for the recipe. I don't need to tell you to wash, peel, and lop the ends off them, right? If I could do it for my dog, you can do it for this recipe.

Take the batter and pour it into a 13x9 pan. Bang the pan 3 times on your kitchen counter (your neighbors will hear it and think you're nuts, but it's fun, so do it.) Bake for 40-45 minutes. Keep a close eye out on the baking time: carrot cake is awful if it's overcooked. It doesn't pull away from the edges of the pan quite as cleanly as other cakes do when they're done, but if the very tips of the edges are starting to look crispy and tipping away from the pan sides and you don't have any wet batter spots left, you're probably good.

Now the perfect topping: cream cheese frosting. The cake is good--really, really good--on its own, but there's just something about cream cheese frosting on it, isn't there? So just give in, do it this way, and eat a smaller portion if you're worried about the fat or calories.

2 T butter, softened or melted
8 oz pkg cream cheese, softened
1 t vanilla
powdered sugar (up to 1 lb)

Take your heavy duty mixer and beat the heck out of the butter and cream cheese. You're trying to take out as many of the cream cheese lumps as possible. Mix in the vanilla (I often go a little heavy on the vanilla) and then start mixing in the powdered sugar. None of us tend to use exact measurements with the powdered sugar here: just keep mixing it in til you get a fairly thick frosting that's still very spreadable. Oh, and you may want to wait til the cake has cooled off to frost it, especially when you're working with a thick frosting like this. I've peeled the cake skins off a few times and gotten it messed up into the frosting because the cake hadn't quite settled yet. Drop dollops of the frosting all over the top of the cake and then spread it out. I've found the wide plastic paint scrapers they sell at hardware stores work really great for this job, and they're cheap. Don't bother to buy the expensive ones at the kitchen equipment stores.

Now the cake is really yummy right away. But like so many things with cinnamon in it, it's even better the second day. Just make sure you refrigerate it because of the frosting. And then have a piece and think of my Big Sis, too.