(upbeat music)
- Hey everyone, welcome
back to Alt-Baking Bootcamp,
your crash course in healthier baking.
I'm Jenny Dorsey,
Professional Chef, Writer,
and Founder of Studio ATAO.
- And I'm Mia Rigden,
Nutritionist, Trained Chef,
and the Founder of RASA.
- Today we are making carrot cake.
Carrot cake is such a classic.
For those people who love
it, you really love it.
It's such a really dense,
like all-year-round treat.
I mean, I've eaten a lot
of carrot cake in my life,
so I'm really excited for this one.
- Yeah, and what I like
about carrot cake is
that it feels really celebratory,
but it's also something that
you'd maybe have for breakfast,
almost like coffee cake.
And obviously the star ingredient
of carrot cakes are carrots.
Any ways that we can sneak veggies
into your sweet treats is always a plus.
Carrots are full of Beta-Carotene
which converts into Vitamin A,
which is an essential nutrient
and is really great for eye health.
They're also full of Vitamin
C and have other vitamins,
minerals, anti-oxidants, phytonutrients
that are really wonderful for our health.
- Our recipe for carrot
cake is gluten-free.
It's also lactose-free.
It has relatively low sugar.
We only use maple syrup as the sweetener,
so it's really useful
and kind of versatile
for anyone who might come over,
an impromptu dessert
that you can whip out.
- [Mia] Mmhm.
(upbeat music)
- So shall we get started
with our taste test?
- Yeah.
- Well this looks like it's a cupcake,
but I mean I think it's great
that carrot cake is versatile
enough to be a cake in a pan.
You can make it into
a cupcake or a muffin.
- The frosting.
- The frosting.
- Means cupcake.
- We are also making frosting today,
but we are not using
the usual cream cheese,
powdered sugar situation.
We're gonna do a lot of
cashews and coconut milk,
but we'll get to that in a little bit.
- You can see the ribbons of
carrot on the inside here,
and I do really like that for texture.
I feel like that's an important
part of a carrot cake.
I'm just gonna open this up.
Yeah, it looks like something.
All right, I'm gonna try it.
- Good texture.
- It has a lot of spices,
which is an important
component to carrot cake
that we're definitely gonna
be using in our version.
And also adds a lot of health benefits
which we'll get to.
- I also think that the
frosting is so sweet
that when you get the frosting
it kinda like diminishes
the complexity of the carrot.
Carrots aren't just sweet, right,
they also taste like carrot,
and I can't really taste any of that
'cause I just get sugar.
- Yeah, I think we can make
something that's less sweet
and is gonna make us feel a
lot better after eating it.
- Yeah, for sure.
- I think we got this.
- Let's do this.
(bright music)
- So for the first step of our recipe,
we are gonna combine our coconut oil here
with our two flours.
We're using almond flour and quinoa flour.
This process is called Reverse Creaming.
We've done this before for
the Birthday Cake episode.
So, very similar idea, you
want the oils to coat the flour
before we add in our liquid ingredients.
So, on many of the recipes for Alt-Baking,
we use almond flour,
and these are usually
blanched almond flour,
so it's like a nice,
kinda like beigey color.
Today, since carrot cake
is already kinda nutty,
there's a lot of brown colors going on,
I thought we would use
flour from whole almonds.
So you can see, it's a
little bit more speckled.
It has the shells of the almonds,
and it's just a little bit nuttier.
- Another important thing to note
is that Vitamin A is
a fat-soluble vitamin,
so that means in order to absorb
the vitamin into our body,
we need to consume it with fats.
So our fats that we're using
today are coconut oil and eggs.
- I'm also gonna just
put in our spices now,
so they distribute nice and evenly.
We've got some ground
ginger, some ground cinnamon,
as well as some ground nutmeg.
- So cinnamon is wonderful,
and we've talked about this before
because it naturally helps
regulate our blood sugar levels.
So when you're consuming
sweets and you add sugar,
you're gonna have less of a spike.
And ginger is really anti-inflammatory,
it's great for your digestive system.
And nutmeg has its own benefits as well,
it can be anti-bacterial
and anti-inflammatory.
- The myth about nutmeg is
that if you eat a lot of it,
it makes you dream crazy dreams.
- Oh really, should we try it?
- I know right.
- I love nutmeg.
- Maybe we'll see after
we eat this carrot cake.
I put some baking powder in there
and that'll help add some leavening power
in addition to the eggs we're using later.
I'll do a little sprinkle of
salt, about a quarter teaspoon.
So what we're looking for
in the final product is
that the coconut oil will have distributed
amongst the flour, and you'll get
kind of like little
breadcrumbesque consistency.
All right, so that looks pretty good
and then now we're gonna
add in our wet ingredients.
So first, three eggs.
- So we use eggs a lot
on Alt-Baking Bootcamp,
and you can always substitute
these for a flax egg
if you have an egg intolerance
or you wanna make this recipe vegan.
But eggs are a great source
of Omega three fatty acids and protein.
We always recommend buying
organic, pasture-raised eggs
when you can.
- And I'm also going in
with our maple syrup.
I like maple syrup in this recipe
since it has a little bit
of that like caramel, toasty notes.
You can also sub honey or a
different liquid sweetener,
but yeah, I think maple
syrup's really nice.
All right, now that this
has really come together.
I would say that took
maybe two to three minutes
at like a medium-high speed,
essentially you're just looking
for the batter to come together
so that it's nicely combined,
looks like kind of a standard
cake batter, it's smooth,
you don't see too many lumps in it.
- [Mia] I love the speckles though
from the wholemeal almond flour.
- Mmhm, now I'm gonna add
our signature ingredient,
our carrots.
We'll do a quick carrot
grating demo first.
- When grating carrots, you
do not have to peel them.
So if you buy them fresh and organic
and just give them a good wash,
there's no reason that
you can't eat the outside.
We just have a box grater here.
It's a really simple kitchen tool.
- And now we're adding our
textural components too.
We have some like chopped up walnuts.
You can sub any nut you like,
or if you don't like nuts,
you don't have to add nuts.
- And walnuts I love
because they're really
high in protein for nuts,
and they're also a great source
of Omega three fatty acids
like the eggs that we're using at well.
And Omega threes are
really anti-inflammatory.
- We also added some golden raisins.
I really like golden raisins
'cause I think they're a little bit milder
than the regular raisins and have kind of,
I don't know, a more bright top note.
But you can use regular
raisins, you can use currants,
whatever your heart desires.
- Yeah, and the nice thing
about adding raisins to this recipe
is that we've cut down the sugar
massively from the original
and so the raisins are gonna
give you a hint of sweetness
without having to add extra sugars.
- Plus, we'll have a frosting for this,
so there's no reason to have
so much sugar in the base cake.
- Yeah.
- So now we have our combined cake batter,
looks pretty good.
So, we just have an eight
inch springform cake pan.
You can also just use a regular cake pan,
it doesn't have to be springform for this,
but I'm just very
attached to my springform,
so I force everyone to use it.
I've lined this with our
little parchment paper
and I'm just gonna do
a little coconut spray
so the cake doesn't stick.
You wanna spray the sides as well.
- This is gonna help us get
the cake out really easily,
so you get those nice clean edges.
- [Jenny] And I also like
to dust with a little bit
of like whatever flour you
end up using in the recipe.
You wanna make sure to
dust the sides as well,
essentially what you're
doing is giving like little,
I call them like little ladders,
for your cake as it's rising
to kind of grab onto the dusted
edges and just keep rising.
- [Mia] That looks so good.
- [Jenny] It smells really good.
- So the cake batter is filling
about a quarter of the
way up the cake pan,
and it's gonna rise pretty significantly.
- If you want like a smoother top,
what I like to do is
simply just tap it down.
(pan bangs)
- [Mia] That gets rid of
the air bubbles as well.
- So, we're just gonna
put this in the oven
at 350 for about 40, 45 minutes
until we can test it with
our little cake tester
and nothing sticks to it.
Our cake's in the oven,
so we've got plenty of
time to make our frosting.
We're using somewhat of a similar process
as we did with the cheesecake
a few episodes ago.
We're using these raw cashews
that have been soaked
in some water overnight
as a base of our frosting
instead of the usual cream
cheese, powdered sugar scenario.
This is really healthy,
the cashews lend a natural
kind of creamy viscosity,
and I'll tell you a little trick
to make it a little tangy as well.
So, we've got one cup
of cashews that are raw
and they've been soaked in
about the same amount of water overnight,
and you can see they've
expanded quite a lot
and have a little wrinkle
looking skin to them now.
- And when you soak it
overnight it softens the cashews
so that when we blend them
with the other ingredients
it's not gonna be grainy.
And as you saw in the cheesecake recipe,
we did the exact same things.
But, if you forgot to soak your
cashews, which does happen,
you can use hot water and
just leave it for 10 minutes.
I think this works a little bit better
and also soaking them overnight
is going to preserve the nutrient quality
where the boiling water won't.
So this is a slightly
better method in my opinion,
but we've got a cheat
for you just in case.
You can also use macadamia
nuts for the frosting
which is super delicious,
but macadamia nuts are really expensive
so the cashews work just as well.
And essentially what we're doing here is,
this is the same process
as making cashew milk
except for instead of
adding water in here,
we are adding all these other ingredients.
And it's gonna be less liquidy,
so it'll have more of
a frosting consistency.
- So now that we have the cashews in here,
we're gonna put in some coconut milk.
- So that comes from a can
so that is the full-fat,
unsweetened coconut milk
that we've used in the past.
Make sure that you get a BPA-free can.
- We also have some maple syrup.
We're gonna add a little
vanilla extract in here,
little sprinkle of salt.
Again, salt always
accentuates the sweetness.
And we're gonna zest a lemon.
- The lemon I think gives it
that spring cheesy tanginess
that we're trying to replicate here.
- Also, if you're feeling really fancy,
you could use a Meyer lemon.
- Mmm, I love Meyer lemons.
- Which has a nice
like fragrance to it too.
- Yeah, it's kind of herbaceous.
And as you may have noticed
in our Lemon Bar episode,
the zest of the lemon
has different nutrients
than the juice.
So right now we're getting
a lot of the essential oils
you get in the zest and that really adds
that lemon fragrance and
also that nice yellow color.
- And, for our final ingredient,
we've got a little bit
of apple cider vinegar.
This adds that kind of like
that weird funky tanginess
that you're used to in cream cheese.
I think this gives this cashew frosting
like something extra,
so you feel like you're eating
a regular cream cheese frosting.
All right, we're just gonna blend this.
This will thicken up considerably,
so you'll probably have
to scrape it a little bit.
If you want your frosting
to be thicker or thinner,
you can also add a little bit more liquid,
or if you want it to thicken
up a little bit more,
some people add a touch of coconut oil,
let it set in the fridge.
So you've got some options.
(blender whirs)
All right, shall we taste it?
- Yeah!
Oh, it looks super creamy.
Definitely doesn't have
cashew clumps in it.
- Nice and smooth.
- Yeah.
It's looking really good.
Shall we just get a little?
Oh, that's excellent.
- That's great.
- I love it, I can really
taste the lemon zest.
It's not overly sweet, but
it's really really smooth.
I think it's gonna be
awesome on top of this cake.
- Honestly, if you didn't tell
me this was cashew frosting,
I probably wouldn't really notice.
- No.
- I'd be like oh frosting.
- [Mia] No.
- Yeah.
- This smells so good.
Should we check to see if it's done?
- Yeah.
- So, as you've seen on many episodes
of Alt-Baking Bootcamp,
we love a cake tester here.
So we're just gonna
insert it in the middle
and see if it comes out
clean, which it does.
So that means it's ready.
- Awesome.
- So now we probably
just wanna let it cool
for probably about 20 minutes.
We wanna let it cool completely
before we frost it
- Yes.
- And eat it.
- Yes, and eat it, most important part.
All right, now that this
cake is totally cool,
I'm just gonna run a knife along the edges
and remove it out of the springform.
That looks pretty good.
- [Mia] See how easily that comes out.
Oh wow, that looks great.
- And now because we had our
parchment paper underneath,
this also lifts very easily off, woop.
So, kind of like our
Birthday Cake episode,
this doesn't have to be
the most perfect frost job.
- [Mia] But you wanna start in the middle
and then work your way out to the sides.
And as you see,
just that one cup of cashews
made so much frosting.
This is plenty for this recipe
and so you could save
the extra if you wanted.
This is a wonderful vegan
frosting alternative
that could be used in so
many different applications.
- All right, how does that look?
- That looks great.
- Well thank you.
(upbeat music)
- I'm so excited to try this.
I can see like the carrots and the raisins
and the walnuts in there,
and I love all the texture
from that whole almond flour.
This looks so good.
That is delicious.
- Mmm, it's super nutty.
- It's really nutty.
- Mmhm.
- It's the perfect amount of sweetness.
Like it definitely feels like a dessert,
but I could totally have this
with some coffee in the morning.
And the frosting definitely
has a nice tanginess and sweetness to it,
but it's not overpowering
like the original was.
- I feel like the frosting
actually adds to the carrot cake
instead of making it just really sweet.
- [Mia] This is so good.
- [Jenny] Mmhm, eat it all,
Eat it all by itself.
(both laugh)
- That's a great way to eat frosting.
- I know.
- Well thank you guys so much
for watching this episode
of Alt-Baking Bootcamp.
The recipe is listed below
if you missed anything.
And if you have any questions, comments,
you wanna share anything, Jenny
and I are monitoring this.
So please let us know how
your carrot cake turns out
and how you use all that extra frosting.
- We also love to create
new recipes for you,
so please let us know if
there are certain things
that you're dying to try
or things that you haven't been
able to find readily online
'cause we will be happy
to create something original just for you.
- We love healthifying these recipes,
so your favorite baked goods,
no matter how indulgent they are,
Jenny and I are ready for
the challenge so hit us up.
- Thanks so much, we'll
catch you next time.
- See you.
(upbeat music)
