Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Paleo Carrot Cake

I saw a friend and fellow Crossfitter, Sherry Fushimi, this weekend at Southwest Regionals and she told me she found a tremendous recipe for a paleo-friendly carrot cake.  She was kind enough to bring me the recipe the next day and I went home that night and made it.  She was right.  It's tremendous.  I brought the cake (without frosting) to work and to my Book Club and shared it with my non-paleo eating friends and they also loved it!  The recipe is another masterpiece by Elana Amsterdam (http://www.elanaspantry.com/) but I modified it just slightly.  You can find the original recipe on her website if you prefer.


Photo stolen from http://www.elanaspantry.com/ because this is the most delicious looking photo I have ever seen and there is no way I could duplicate or improve it.

Paleo Carrot Cake

Ingredients:
3 cups blanched almond flour
1 teaspoon celtic sea salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
5 eggs
½ cup raw, unfiltered honey
¼ cup grapeseed oil (or almond oil)
3 cups carrots, grated (I used my food processor after hand grating 1 cup and nearly taking my thumb off)
1 cup dates, chopped
1 cup walnuts, coarsly chopped

Method:
In a large bowl, combine almond flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg
In a separate bowl, mix together eggs, honey and oil
Stir carrots, dates and walnuts into wet ingredients
Stir wet ingredients into dry
Place batter into 2 well greased, round 9 Inch cake pans (I used two 8x4 bread pans)
Bake at 325° for 35 minutes (I baked them for about 40 minutes, but check them at 35 minutes by inserting a toothpick in the center and ensuring it comes out clean)
Cool to in pans for one hour and spread with coconut cream frosting if you like.  You can find that recipe at http://www.elanaspantry.com/coconut-cream-frosting/
Serve to everyone you know because they all will like it.

14 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing this recipe! I turned it into cupcakes and they were a huge hit!

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  2. two teaspoons of salt is way too much i had a piece and couldnt stand it, but other than that it was wonderful ill do it again but with one teaspoon

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  3. My sister made this for her husband's birthday. OH MY WORD. She put raisins instead of dates (I believe), and I am about to make it now. Can I say again OH MY WORD? Thank you for inspiring my sister. ;-)

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  4. I don't have grapeseed/almond oil - can I used extra virgin olive oil?

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    1. I wouldn't recommend EVOO because it can become very bitter and overbearing in baking recipes. If olive oil is your only option, you would be better off with a light tasting olive oil, rather than extra virgin. You could also try applesauce in place of the oil to keep the cake moist!

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    2. I used melted butter and it was awesome

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  5. I've been looking for a good Paleo carrot cake recipe. I believe I may have found it. To the person who asked about using Olive oil...what about coconut oil? I think it would be the same texture as a vegetable oil..

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  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. You could use agave (I'm not a big fan because it is still processed, but it would be safe for your kiddo) or you could also try maple syrup. Ask your physician if honey is still risky after being cooked in a recipe. I don't know the temp required to heat kill botulism, but the cook time may make honey safe for your little one! :-)

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  7. Hey,

    Thanks for the suggestion of the agave. BUt, I ended up having an even worse issue! The cake turned out inedible!

    Does anyone have thoughts? I used coconut flour b/c I couldn't find blanched almond flour where we live. Was that the mistake? We can get most of the Bob's Mills brand flours so there are a number of others we could use.

    My husband thinks that maybe the dry to wet ratio was off but I measured everything. The batter was hardly batter; much more like a crumble and even after baking still just fell apart, and not in an appetizing way.

    Any thoughts?

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    1. Coconut flour is a much finer and dense flour than almond flour. It cannot be used as a direct replacement. I have used almond meal (just whole almonds in the food processor until finely ground) in place of blanched almond flour and that worked pretty well. Not quite as delicious as the blanched almond flour, but will work much better than coconut flour in this recipe. Hope that helps!

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  8. can i substitute unsweetened applesauce + baking powder for some of the eggs?

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    1. I'm a big fan of eggs, so haven't tried this. Cooking is all about experimentation and I'd be willing to bet it would still be delicious. If you try it, would you please let me know how it turns out?

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