I don’t like to throw away stuff, especially stuff that’s still usable.
This goes for food. And this reminds me of Mary, a good friend who refuses to discard chocolates from her fridge. I can be like Mary too.
I can feel extremely guilty about throwing away edible food. Must be all those years of my dad admonishing me to finish up food on my plate as a child because “the kids in Africa are starving”. Mentally I have that picture of a starving African kid each time I throw food out.
The one with the bloated tummy and huge, limpid eyes.
Now it’s better because the food goes into my compost pots in the garden. At least they’re turned into fertilizer. That’s a second life for food.
Ever since I got myself a juicer, I’ve been churning out fresh carrot juices about twice a week (when I am not too lazy to wash the machine!).
I never knew having carrot pulp could be such a guilt trip. It does when you have pulp from 5 Australian carrots staring you in the face, daring, simply daring you to chuck them into the compost bin.
So I refrain. I pack the pulp up into plastic containers and freeze them.
In the end, I realized that I could do something with the carrot pulp. I could make carrot cake!
You see, back in the days when I didn’t have a juicer, I would grate carrots by hand. Terrible job, that. Hated that but loved chomping on freshly baked carrot cake.
So now I solved my carrot cake woe. I had plenty of carrot pulp to make carrot cake with. (I am not a big fan of cheese frosting so I omit that plus storing cake with frosting is one mean, messy job.)
So here’s the carrot cake recipe which I fall back on because it’s simple and tastes great. I actually stumbled on a secret tip that makes carrot cake moist….the addition of green apple. That’s also because I juice carrots and green apples together in one go (yes, to make a healthier juice than say, just carrots).
The sweetness level is just right because I can’t stand overly sweet cakes. That’s why I make cakes with brown sugar.
I love this quick cake because it is easy to mix up and easy to eat. What’s not to love about a cake like this? And it contains carrot pulp and green apple pulp which means extra fibre and health-inducing qualities.
(And I add beetroot pulp to chocolate cakes but that’s totally another story for another blog post.)
Moist Carrot Cake
130 gm self raising flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp ground cloves
130 gm brown sugar
2 cups grated carrot (or carrot pulp from 5 medium size carrots + pulp from 1 green apple, if you like extra moistness)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup golden raisins
2 eggs, beaten
150 ml vegetable oil or melted butter
1/4 tsp salt (omit salt if you’re using salted butter)
1. Preheat oven to 180C . Grease and line your pan. Or if you’re like me and can’t be bugged with greasing and lining, just grease your pan and sprinkle flour all over the greased pan. Shake off excess flour but ensure flour coats the bottom of the entire pan.
2. Sift flour, bicarbonate of soda and ground cloves.
3. Mix in sugar, carrot pulp, walnut and raisins. Pour in eggs and oil (or melted butter).
4. Plug in your electric mixer. On medium speed, beat this mixture until well-combined about 3 minutes.
5. Pour mixture into your pan and bake for 20 – 25 minutes or until your cake is done.
Frosting option:
Once your cake is cool and removed from the pan, you can make your frosting. In a mixer on high speed, whip 60 gm cream cheese with 30gm butter and 1 tsp lemon juice. Add 2-3 tbsp icing sugar and whip till smooth. Smooth over your cooled cake.
