Carrot cake – the perfect recipe for zero food waste!

Filed in Blog by on January 22, 2009 9 Comments
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carrot cakeCarrots are a favourite of mine and Little Miss Green, so we by a lot of them. But at the end of the week, even we have a few left over. Usually it’s not a problem; I eat them most days with my main meals and Little miss Green’s favourite soups are carrot and lentil or vegetable.

A few weeks ago they had a bargainous buy at Lidls on organic carrots and I came across a recipe for carrot muffins, which one of our loyal reader’s, Indiebird, shared on a forum. As I’ve said in previous posts, I’m not a faffy chef, so I just made up the mix and put it in a brownie tin rather than individual muffin cases to make one large cake.

Mr Green does not do carrots in any shape or form, but he wolfed down this cake with cries of ‘More’. The texture was fab – the carrots helped to keep it moist and it wasn’t too sweet. Here’s the recipe should you have a glut of carrots to use up πŸ™‚

Ingredients

175g wholemeal self raising flour (Like Indiebird, we don’t buy self raising flour so I put 4 tsp of baking powder into the scales and topped it up with flour until it showed 175 gms)
75g dark brown sugar (I used about 60g Fructose as LMG can’t tolerate refined sugar)
2 more teaspoons of baking powder.
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract.
225g grated carrots
120ml of sunflower or other light oil.
about 1/4 tsp ground ginger and a pinch of nutmeg.

Ingredients for icing (I didn’t bother icing it, my two just ate it with cream)

250g marscapone
100g icing sugar
juice of half a lemon for the icing.

Method

Preheat oven to 180c or gas 4 and line a fairy cake tin with paper cases (or grease a brownie tin in my case!)

Sift flour into a big bowl.
Add the sugar and baking powder.
In a jug, measure out the oil, add your eggs and vanilla and whisk this together until it is incorporated.
Add the eggy mixture, carrots and spices to the flour.

Mix together well.
Spoon this mixture into your cake cases about 2/3 full and pop this in the oven for about 25/30 minutes.
The cake will be golden brown when cooked.

Leave the cakes to cool and then make your icing: Put the marscapone in a bowl and sift on the icing sugar. Mix together, then add the lemon juice. Once the cakes are cool, spoon this on and you are ready to eat them all up!!

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About the Author ()

I am a long time supporter of the Green and Sustainable lifestyle. After being caught in the Boscastle floods in 2004, our family begun a journey to respect and promote the importance of Earth's fragile ecosystem, that focussed on reducing waste. Inspired by the beauty and resourcefulness of this wonderful planet, I have published numerous magazine articles on green issues and the author of four books.

Comments (9)

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  1. maisie says:

    I’ve done this in the past as well, and the comments before eating were “eugh” but after “when can you make that again”.

  2. Sarah says:

    Only DS likes carrot cake here. But we all love eating carrots, put them in soup, grow them and feed peelings and old ones to the hens and guinea pigs.

  3. This sounds delicious Mrs G – Carrot cake is my favourite. I think I might just give that a go. πŸ˜€ x

  4. Oh yes, baking is one of the main ways I use up produce! Lots of different fruits and veggies can go into muffins, cakes, or breads.

  5. Mr. Green says:

    @Kristen@The Frugal Girl: Mrs. G also has made some courgette (MarrowΒ squash plant) which may sound totally dreadful. However, it was very rich and it was impossible to detect a vegetable taste. Providing ingedients don’t have a strong pungent taste most of them blend in very well to add increased taste, texture and nutrition.

  6. Katy says:

    Yummy πŸ™‚ I have another carrot cake recipe which works really well with parsnips – it’s based on cooking and soaking the grated carrots overnight, so works fine even for quite poor specimens! I’ve seen recipes for beetroot cake in both chocolate and non-chocolate (very pink!) versions, but never tried them. And courgette cake is on my list to try as well!

  7. Kris says:

    Mmm cake. πŸ˜‰

    However, you’re making me regret not asking my very kind shopping fairy today to get me a carrot or two (I’m feeling ick) but I can hopefully redress that soon.

    I’m not very keen on carrot as a cooked vegetable (though that doesn’t stop me happily eating large amounts) and at home I usually nibble through my share just before it hits the pot.

  8. ClaraP says:

    *nodding furiously* (with mouth full)

    Tried and loved, Mrs G. I am about to go for my second slice of the day. I added some raisins that needed using. I thought about grating in some wrinkly apples too.

    I’ve eaten courgette and lime cake in a lovely coffee shop in Norfolk, and I’ve made beetroot and chocolate cake … but that didn’t turn out quite as I was hoping … If you fancy a laugh you can read about it here: http://tinyurl.com/beetrootick

  9. Mrs Green says:

    @maisie: I know what you mean. When I made the courgette cake I didn’t actually tell LMG until she had eaten some, because I knew she would refuse otherwise. In the end she wouldn’t believe me anyway!!

    @Sarah: I’ll eat carrots in anything Sarah. In fact, when DD was born they thought she had jaundice. Little did they know that mum-to-be was craving over 1kg of carrots a day throughout the pregnancy. The palms of my hands were orange LOL!

    @Almost Mrs Average: Do try it, Mrs A – it’s easy and yummy πŸ™‚

    @Kristen@The Frugal Girl: I’d love to hear what other things you put into cakes and muffins, Kristen.

    @Katy: Wow, parsnips. Now that I do find hard to believe can taste good. Do you have a recipe anywhere?

    @Kris: Hope you will be feeling better soon, Kris.

    @ClaraP: Ah, so it was you spitting bits of carrot at my screen, Clara. The idea of raisins and apples is excellent. Apple cake is one of our favourites. Courgette and lime sounds great – I think LMG would love that; I wonder how much of each they use. Our beetroot and chocolate cake was awesome; your blog post is great and that mashed potato looks amazing!

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