This is – hands down – the best carrot cake one can bake! It is moist and delicious, has nutritional value and even looks beautiful. It is also easy to make and that’s why I am baking this almost every week.
“Let them eat cake!”
If my kids look around for a snack between meals and nothing really triggers them, I tell them to just eat cake. Now, both of them don’t have to worry about their waist even a little bit and I don’t feel bad about feeding them so much cake also because this one has so much good stuff in it. First, there are carrots in it – duh – but also der spelt flour has much more nutritional value than wheat flour. It also prevents insulin spikes. Then there are walnuts – very healthy and it’s also the only way to get my daughter eating nuts at all. For the oil I am using healthy grapeseed oil which is a great antioxidant and has plenty of vitamin E.
Leaves us with eggs (you can suplement apple sauce or soy flour mixed with water) and sugar – ok you got me there!
Video for Moist Carrot Cake with Spelt Flour
The Carrot Decoration
It is very common to decorate a carrot cake with marzipan carrots. While one can buy them in the store in Germany, here I have to make them myself, which is easy. I sometimes also make the marzipan from scratch (Marzipan recipe here) but often I use the shortcut of using store-bought – there are only 24 hours in a day!
You basically only have to dye some marzipan orange, shape them into carrot shapes, make some small indentions on the top and use some green dyed marzipan for the carrot greens. I show you how to do this in my video.
What I would recommend: Do not store the marzipan carrots in the fridge. They become a little mushy there and also wet. You better store them on the counter and put them on the cake right before serving.
The Frosting
Full disclosure: I usually make an American frosting from cream cheese and butter with confectioners sugar. I often don’t have Creme Fraiche on hand for the original recipe and I really like the American cream cheese frosting. But I wanted to stick to the original recipe in my video and for this post, so you can decide for yourself. The original frosting is a little bit on the sour side, which is on purpose. It’s supposed to enhance the taste of the cake and counter the sweetness of the cake. It tastes very good!
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Carrot Cake – super moist, with Spelt Flour
Equipment
Ingredients
Cake Batter
- 80 g Walnuts
- 4 Eggs
- 200 g Light Brown Sugar
- 350 g Carrots
- 200 g Spelt Flour or Wheat Flour
- 2 tsp Baking Powder
- 1 tsp Cinnamon
- 1 pinch Nutmeg fresh ground is available
- ½ tsp fresh ginger or ¼ tsp ground ginger
- 1 Organic Lemon, Zest from it
- 1 pinch Salt
- 250 ml Oil, neutral taste i.e. sunflower or grapeseed oil
Marzipan Carrots
- 200 g Marzipan
- some drops orange Food Color
- 1 drop green Food Color
Frosting
- 150 g Cream Cheese
- 150 g Creme Fraiche
- 1 organic Lemon, some cest and juice of it
- 2 tbsp Confectioners Sugar
Instructions
Making the Cake
- In a pan without oil, roast the walnuts at medium heat.
- Let the nuts cool, then chop them.
- Shred the carrots. I like them shred larger but you decide how fine you want them.
- Put the eggs and sugar into a mixing bowl and mix for 5 to 7 minutes. It must become very light and fluffy!
- Preheat the oven to 170°C / 340°F (convection oven) or 180°C / 350°F (regular oven).
- In a different bowl, mix the flour, nutmeg, salt, baking powder, ginger and cinnamon.
- Mix with the paddel attatchment if using a stand mixer: alternating, add the flour mix and the oil to the eggs. Mix as short as possible.
- Now add the shredded carrots and chopped walnuts and give it a short mix to combine.
- Prepare a baking pan (9 or 10 inch) by buttering and putting a thin layer of flour on it.
- Pour the cake batter into the baking pan and bake for about 30 to 35 minutes.
- Remove the cake from the oven and let cool completely.
Making the Marzipan Carrots
- Use ⅔ of the marzipan or a little more to dye with orange fool color and set aside.
- Use the remaining marzipan to dye green and set aside.
- Shape the orange marzipan into a long log and divide it into 12 even portions.
- Shape each portion into a sphere, then start rolling it between your hands to create a carrot shape (see video). With the back of a small brush or something like that, put a little hole in the thick side of the carrot. Also, with the back of a knife, make little indentions into the carrots as you know them from real carrots.
- Roll some of the green marzipan into very thin strings. Cut the length of about 1 inch and use two of these to lay as a cross or X. Grab at the meeting point in the center and lift. Carefully push the thick side where you grabbed it into the hole of the carrot.
The Creme Fraiche Frosting
- Put all ingredients into a bowl and mix until well combined.
Decorating the Cake
- Evenly distribute the Frosting on the top of the cake. If it is very liquid, it can help to put a cake ring around first.
- Put into the fridge to set.
- Before serving, place the 12 carrots onto the cake. ENJYO!
This cake looks amazing! Did you use whole ground spelt flour (with the bran and the germ) or white Spelt flour? I have both.
I think it is white spelt flour but I am not entirely sure. I bought that 25 lbs bag and it has only a little lable with almost no information.