Carrot Cake II

This really wasn’t I had intended to make. After the success with the first carrot cake recipe, I had planned to adapt it with a tropical touch including banana and coconut oil.

So I bought a bunch of Dole bananas, and (un)fortunately, before launching into cake-baking, I ate one of the bananas on its own. Within a few bites, I was having the worst fruit/veg reaction I’d had in a many, many months when the inside of my mouth starting itching. Ever since the food intolerances became a major problem last June, I’d noticed mild oral itching to bananas (including fried bananas, goreng pisang) and stayed away since then. After such a long period of banana-avoidance I expected the food sensitivity to improve but not at all! Bananas don’t have high levels of salicylates (and I can tolerate reasonable amounts of just about all other fruits and vegetables now, so salicylates aren’t a big problem for me anymore), and I don’t have severe intolerance to amines - unless it’s the amines in cheese that give me this terrible reaction. Banana allergy is well-documented (see also here): it’s classified as either reaction to birch-tree pollen or latex allergy and allergenicity increases with ripeness. However, I don’t think I react to the other substances in either of those categories though. Anyway, whatever it is, this was another crucial food challenge for me. It’s a good thing I didn’t go through the effort of making the cake only to find I couldn’t eat it. Goodbye, bananas ;_;!

Then I discovered there was only one egg left in the fridge and there was simply no time to go out and get some more. I had run of snacks to eat and was in the middle of a really hectic few days, so I really had to bake something during that window of time I’d managed to squeeze out. With a quick internet search, I ended up with this super-easy carrot cake recipe from Delia Smith that only needed one egg!

As with every recipe I attempt,  I reduced the amount of sugar; for this cake: 33g instead of 75g. My general rule is about a third or a quarter of the recipe quantity but I also judge by sight, comparing the amount of sugar with the amount of flour and other ingredients.

I replaced 1/3 cup of vegetable oil with coconut oil, not wanting to overwhelm the cake with coconut flavour by using entirely coconut oil, but in the end, I couldn’t taste it at all!

Being too lazy to make the cream cheese frosting. I simply slathered the cream cheese directly onto the cake. Guess that’s also a good way to cut down on the sugar and butter content! Unfrosted cakes also travel better in bento.

Quite unlike the previous carrot cake I baked, this one uses the muffin method of mixing, and specifies that dark brown sugar be used. Like Delia Smith’s other carrot cakes, it uses wholemeal flour (great!). These elements produced a closer, denser texture and dark colour more akin the heavy carrot cakes I like, but overall it wasn’t an outstanding cake. I would prefer to experiment with other carrot cake recipes rather than bake this one again.

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