La petite biscotte Now in Munich…

Carrot Cake

My favourite cake must be carrot cake. No wait, this carrot cake.
I remember when I lived in Germany, as a student, I used to work at a coffee shop to earn a bit of extra money. It was there that I saw carrot cake for the first time. “Möhrenkuchen” it was called and we had a lot of it left over one day. The owner of the shop gave me some to take home but I almost declined (imagine that!) because I thought it would just land in the trash can anyway… like the ignorant tart that I was, I left the carrot cake in the fridge for a day before unpacking it and eyeing it dubiously. When I decided to finally take a bite, it tasted so good, I had tears of joy in the eyes!
I desperately tried to make my mum try it but she refused.. “Carrots are for savory dishes, don’t you know that?!”. This is where I went on a mission: Whenever I made some carrot cake, I tried to sneakily make her eat it. Like Inspector Gadget I invented different disguises for the cake. I coated it in chocolate, covered it with powdered sugar or tried to give some to her right after a nap… but do you think she fell for it even once?? Nope!

This recipe is my absolute favourite. It’s very easy to make, doesn’t require fussy ingredients and is actually healthier than a cake made with butter.

Ingredients

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup whole-wheat flour
• 1 cup nuts, grated
• 1/2 cup refined sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2 cups carrots, finely grated
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup oil
• 3 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 egg

• 1 tablet of white chocolate

Preparation

1. Combine the two flours, nuts, baking soda, cinnamon and salt in a bowl. Mix well.
2. In another large bowl combine oil, egg, and milk. While blending slowly add the two sugars and the carrots. Then add the dry ingredients that you combined before.
3. Preheat the oven at 170°C. Grease a baking tin (round or square), put some baking sheet at the bottom and fill it with your batter. Put it in the oven for 50-60 minutes and keep checking with a long knife if the cake is done. Once no batter gets stuck to the knife, you can remove the cake from the oven. Let it cool down for 10 minutes in the baking tin then remove it from the tin and let cool down on a cake rack.
4. Melt the white chocolate either in the microwave or over hot water. If you melt it in the microwave, put the chocolate pieces in a bowl, turn down the power of your microwave to medium and let it run for 40 secs. Stir the chocolate once, then put it in the microwave for another 40 seconds.
5. If you melt your chocolate over hot water, you’ll need two bowls. One big one and a smaller one that fits inside. Fill the big one with hot water and put the chocolate in the smaller bowl. Now put the smaller bowl inside the big bowl so that the heat of the water comes through the smaller bowl and melts the white chocolate. Be careful though, the water must not get in touch with the chocolate. Let it melt like that, stirring once in a while.
6. Pour the liquid white chocolate over the cake so it covers the whole surface. Once the chocolate turns solid you can slice the cake.

Enjoy!