Carrot Cake Loaf

Consider this my 2016 Easterly contribution to the blogosphere.  But seriously guys.  Can we just pause to revel in all that is carroty and cakey?

I used to think I hated carrot cake, and then I realized that I just hate nuts in baked goods. Don’t get me wrong, there’s really nothing fundamentally wrong with nuts and I deeply enjoy them in other foods.  I.e. my favorite hazelnut arugula salad, which is my salad of choice and is made on repeat in The Gourmet Gourmand house and beyond (i.e. my mom’s house and my sister’s house for any get-together).But! Despite my nutty love, there’s something about the texture of nuts in baked goods that just interrupts things for me.  Thus I prefer my cakes, cookies, and brownies unadulterated and nut-free.

So low and behold, when I discovered nut-free carrot cake is something that exists, I learned to be a reveler.  Because rich, sweet, spice cake dotted with moisture-enhancing carrots and smeared with glorious and tangy cream cheese frosting is my idea of dream-dessert-come-true.

This recipe is the Cooks Illustrated carrot cake recipe, which I’ve adapted for loaf-making. I’ve been meaning to make their cake for a very long time- namely because the reviews are stellar, but also because it was created as an intentionally nut-free carrot cake!  Score.

The cake is really everything that you could want in a carrot cake- it is moist, tender, spicy, and has great soft texture (read: not too dense or too fluffy).  And I found that the cake gets better with age- day 1 is great, but days 2 and 3 are even better.  It’s all about that carroty moisture, methinks.The frosting is a classic cream cheese frosting; a stick of cream cheese, a little butter, and a whole lot of powdered sugar.  I did go a little over-board and dyed a little bit of the frosting with orange and green food coloring so that I could make cute carrot decorations all over the carrot cake loaf.  (Because Easter season is seriously all about cute and adorable decorating, amirite?)This recipe actually makes 2 loaves of carrot cake, but you can easily halve the recipe if you are someone who is also a carrot cake reveler, but perhaps wanting to watch the waistline.For me, I can never have enough carrot cake and have an inappropriate and very unhealthy aversion to dieting.  So I took one cake to the office (gotta make the new coworkers like me..) but kept one at home for intermittent “light snacking” aka gorging.So be prepared, folks, this adorable Carrot Cake Loaf was so amazingly good that it might just have made its way into “tradition” land of The Gourmet Gourmand Easter celebration.And I hope will become tradition at your house as well.  Enjoy!

Carrot Cake Loaf

Adapted from Cooks Illustrated for Food.com

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Prep Time 20 mins

Cook Time 1 hr

Servings 2 8.5x4.5 loaves of carrot cake

Ingredients

  

_For the Loaves_

• 2 ½ cups all purpose flour
• 1 ¼ teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 ¼ teaspoons ground cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
• ½ teaspoon table salt
• 1 lb whole carrots peeled
• 1 ½ cups granulated sugar
• ½ cup dark brown sugar packed
• 4 large eggs
• 1 ½ cups vegetable oil

_For the Cream Cheese Frosting_

• 8 oz cream cheese softened
• 3 tablespoons butter softened
• 3 ½ cups powdered sugar
• ½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• Green and orange food coloring optional

Instructions

 

For the Loaves

• Grease and flour two 8.5 x 4.5 loaf pans. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
• In a large bowl combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and salt. Whisk thoroughly to combine.
• In a food processor with grater/shredder attachment, process the carrots until shredded. Pour into medium bowl and set aside. (Recommend grating your own carrots.. the pre-grated variety at the store are typically too thick to use in carrot cake and don't soften adequately as the cake bakes).
• Wipe out food processor and fit with standard metal attachment. Add white sugar, brown sugar, and eggs. Process until mixture is thoroughly combined.
• Next, with food processor running, drizzle oil into the sugar/egg mixture until mixture is thick and emulsified. About 30 seconds.
• Pour wet mixture into dry ingredients, using a spatula to scrape as much of the liquid ingredients as you can from the food processor.
• Whisk dry ingredients and wet ingredients together until combined. Mixture will be very thick.
• Fold carrots into the batter using your spatula.
• Distribute batter evenly between 2 loaf pans.
• Bake for about 60 minutes or until toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean or with just a few moist crumbs.

For the cream cheese frosting:

• Using hand mixer, beat cream cheese and butter on medium speed until fluffy.
• Add powdered sugar, a ½ cup at a time, until smooth.
• Mix in vanilla extract until thoroughly combined.
• Pipe or spread onto cooled carrot cake loaves.

Optional decoration:

• Separate two ¼ cup portions of frosting into separate bowls. Add a few drops of orange and green food coloring into each bowl and mix, adjusting colors to your preference.
• Spoon dyed frosting into small ziplock bags, and cut a tiny opening in the corner of each bag.
• Gently pipe carrot designs all over the top of the cake, as desired. Carrots are made by squeezing a blob of orange frosting then quickly drawing the frosting in a downward motion.
• Add “leaves” by making 1-2 small dots on the top of the orange “carrot.”