Sometimes I am my worst enemy. Having planned to make a second cake for the market last Saturday, I left 3 eggs in the fridge while I went to my Friday coffee at NoFo with a fresh Carrot Cake. A mix of fresh local ingredients, I worked hard to eliminate things that I could not find locally so I could feature it at the Saturday Midtown Farmers’ Market as well. Unfortunately I forgot that the kids are at home for the summer and sometimes they actually cook their own food. You know where this is going…..
Most Fridays are spent in a furious routine having Coffee at NoFo where I help open the indoor farmers’ market and answer questions about the crops, cheese and bread that has come in for the weekend. Then I rush home and start preparing the food I’ll need for the Saturday market. It’s always a mix of prepared items and some items I’ll be cooking at the market so I have to plan a couple of days in advance what items I will need to take with me.
Around 8 pm the house had finally cooled down. The windows were open and it was quite comfortable in the kitchen. I mixed the dry ingredients for the cake, and started to mix the wet. It was just about 8:15 when I discovered 1 egg, not 3 in the fridge. Yes, there are stores open 24/7 in my neighborhood, but who knows where those eggs have come from or how old they really are and whether the chickens were eating feed laced with arsenic preservative. I realized that I could not remember the last time I bought eggs from a grocery store. It’s been years that I have been buying my eggs directly from farmers.
In the end, I only took a little over half of the cake to the Midtown Market and was the early folks were happy to gobble up the samples. This fall I am going to be able to feature a couple of items like this cake with NC grown walnuts that I will be getting from a sustainable farm that recently found an old producing tree on the property. In the meantime, this cake is excellent made with NC sustainably grown pecans. It’s not terribly sweet because I’ve swapped out the plain white sugar for a couple of other types of sweeteners that I think add more depth and nutrients to the cake. This cake is moist, the texture is rich and flavor if dynamic so you won’t miss cream cheese icing. Unfortunately, I completely forgot to take a picture of the cake this week so as soon as I make it again, I’ll update this post.
Early Summer Carrot Cake
Ingredients
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup white/wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 Ceylon Cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon Himalayan salt
1/4 teaspoon Nutmeg
dash of Ginger
dash of Allspice
3 Eggs at room temperature
1/2 cup Coconut oil
3/4 cup Buttermilk
1/2 cup Date Sugar
1/2 cup Dark Brown Sugar
1/2 cup Cane Sugar
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1/4 teaspoon fresh Lemon Zest
1 cup toasted Walnuts or Pecans
1/4 cup Golden Raisins
Preparation
- Sift the flours, baking soda, spices, and salt to together.
- Lightly beat the eggs.
- Beat the coconut oil (liquid, but not hot) into the eggs.
- Beat the buttermilk into the eggs.
- After the wet ingredients are mixed well, add the date, brown and cane sugar. Mix until well blended.
- Blend the vanilla extract and lemon zest into the egg mixture.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet slowly using a spatula. Blend it until it just comes together.
- Fold the nuts and raisins into the batter with a spatula .
- Pour into a well-greased 9″ x 13″ x 2″ pan (butter or coconut oil).
- Bake at 355F for 25-30 minutes. Start testing the cake with a toothpick at 25 minutes.
