Roasty Toasty Carrot Cake

An easy, single layer snack cake loaded with caramelized, roasted carrots, bright citrus, and toasted walnuts and topped with a classic cream cheese frosting.

Guys, I’ve been sitting on this recipe for a long time waiting for the perfect time to share it. I started working on this recipe back around Easter, when our recipe lists and tables were filled with carrot cake. For starters, I wanted simple—single layer, no torte-ing, easy to mix together. But I also wanted a little bit interesting when it came to flavors. I started playing around with the idea of roasting carrots before adding them for an extra layer of depth, adding lots of toasted walnuts, and balancing all of that warmth out with bright citrus flesh, zest, and juice. After a few trials, we had a winner.

a very easy carrot cake recipe

This recipe features our usual carrot cake cast of characters:

• Flours: I used a blend of spelt and all purpose for a bit of extra nuttiness, but you can definitely do 100% all purpose if you don’t have any spelt flour.

• Spices and Leaveners: There are lots of warming spices in this recipe—cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves. And then baking soda to balance the acidity in the carrots and baking powder for rise. And salt. Always salt.

• Sugar: For sweetness, of course.

• Oil: This is an oil-based cake for maximum moisture. I like the grassiness of olive oil, but you could also use any neutral oil of your choice—avocado, vegetable, or grapeseed.

• Eggs: In this recipe, eggs provide fat, emulsification, moisture, and structure.

• Carrots: In this recipe, I’m using carrots two ways: some roasted and pureed for depth of flavor and lots of moisture. Plus a few shredded carrots because you can’t have carrot cake without visible carrot pieces.

• Walnuts: Extra toasty.

• Citrus: I used both orange and lemon zest, plus chopped up the flesh of the orange for a little extra pizzazz.

Yield 8, one 9" cake

Author Anna Ramiz

Prep time

30 Min

Cook time

1 Hour

Total time

1 H & 30 M

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Roasty Toasty Carrot Cake

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This simple, spiced snack cake is filled with sweet, roasted carrots and toasted walnuts and topped with a bright, tangy cream cheese frosting.

IngredientsUSMetric

for the roasted carrots

• 3 large carrots
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp granulated sugar
• pinch of salt

for the cake

• 1/2 cup (65 g) spelt flour
• 1 cup (125 g) all purpose
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground cardamom
• 1/8 tsp ground cloves
• 1 1/3 cup (260 g) granulated sugar
• 1 orange, zested
• 1 lemon, zested
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup (165 g) olive oil
• carrot puree, from roasted carrots (above)
• 2 large carrots, shredded
• 1 cup (100 g) toasted walnuts
• the flesh of one orange, chopped

for the frosting

• 2 oz (4 tbsp) unsalted butter, softened
• 8 oz cream cheese, softened
• 4 oz creme fraiche
• 1/2 tsp vanilla powder, or 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 100 g powdered sugar
• pinch of salt

Instructions

to make the roasted carrot puree

1. Preheat the oven 425° F.
2. Cut carrots into sticks and place in a small baking dish. Add the olive oil, sugar, and salt and stir to coat. Roast for 30 minutes, until carrots are softened and caramelized. Let cool.
3. Transfer the cooled, roasted carrots to a food processor and pulse until pureed. Set aside.

to make the cake

1. Preheat the oven to 350° F and line a 9” cake pan with parchment paper.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together spelt flour, all purpose flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves. Set aside.
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, combine sugar, orange zest, lemon zest, and eggs. Whip on medium high speed for 3-4 minutes until light in color and thick.
4. Decrease the mixer speed to low and gradually stream in the olive oil, whipping until homogenized. Add the carrot puree and mix once more until completely combined.
5. Remove the bowl from the mixer and add the dry ingredients. Stir with a rubber spatula until all of the flour has been incorporated and no dry spots remain.
6. Chop the toasted walnuts and add them to the batter along with the shredded carrots. Peel the orange and chop the flesh. Add the orange flesh to the batter. Gently fold with a rubber spatula until everything is distributed throughout the batter.
7. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 45-55 minutes, until the cake is deeply browned, the top is set, and the sides begin to pull away from the pan.
8. Cool completely in the pan, and then flip out onto a cooling rack.

to make the frosting

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment combine the butter and cream cheese. Beat for about 30 seconds, until smooth.
2. Add the crème fraîche, sift in the powdered sugar, and add the vanilla and salt. Whip again until frosting is thick and smooth.
3. Spread the frosting in a thick layer over the top of the cooled cake.

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Browned Butter and Walnut Chocolate Chip Cookies

Thick and chewy chocolate chip cookies filled with nutty browned butter, toasted walnuts, and puddles of dark chocolate. The best simple chocolate chip cookie recipe.

New year, new cookies! You can never go wrong with the classic chocolate chip, and this week, we’re making them my very favorite way—with toasty walnuts, a little rye flour, and browned butter, aka, maximum nuttiness.

We spent last weekend disconnected from the entire world in an adorable little Getaway cabin in the woods of Northern Minnesota. We locked our phones away and spent the weekend roasting marshmallows, cozy-ing up with good books, and teaching ourselves all sorts of two-person card games. Oh, and we cooked. Cabin cooking was such a fun little challenge for me as I prepped like a mad woman before we left on Friday afternoon and played a very intense game of cooler Tetris to get all of my tools and ingredients in as few bags as possible.

I brought along my dutch oven and the theme of the weekend was flavorful, not-boring meals that you can make in one pot. We had great success! I made a roasted potato, rotisserie chicken, and kale hash loaded with lots of bright dill and charred lemons and a blistered tomato, shallot, white bean and sausage stew that we sopped up with crispy pieces of bread. And I made these cookies.

I used this little getaway as an opportunity to test this recipe one more time “for quality control purposes”, ya know? And good thing I did because I completely ruined them. I don’t know if you’ve seen it on the interwebs, but there is this trick where you put flaky salt on the bottom of the cookie before baking instead of sprinkling it on top afterwards so that the salt will stick better. I thought to myself, “Wow, what a smart idea. I’ll definitely do that!” except instead of flaky salt I was using ultra-coarse vanilla infused French grey salt and instead of doing a little sprinkle number, I decided to do sort of a pressing situation resulting in far too much salt. Like inedible saltiness. So we sat in our cute tiny cabin and used a butter knife to slice off the tops of the cookies and ate them like little cookie bites.

But don’t worry! I made them one more time when we got home and went back to my tried and true sprinkle method and they were perfect and delicious and possibly one of the best cookies I’ve made in a long time. Moral of the story, don’t try everything you see on the internet…except for these cookies. You should definitely try these, they’re very good!

how to make browned butter chocolate chip cookies

These cookies are great because they are super straight forward in the methodology, but still pack a bit of a flavor punch (through our walnut + browned butter + rye flour trio). Here’s how you make ‘em!

1. Toast the walnuts! Toasting your nuts for just 5 minutes or so creates malliard browning, which is a reaction between heat and proteins (not sugar, that’s caramelization) that makes brown food brown and imparts that “browned” (aka toasty and delicious) flavor. When you toast your nuts, you’re adding an entirely new depth of flavor so pop them in the oven for a few minutes while you prep the rest of your ingredients.

2. Brown the butter. Browning butter is one of the simplest and most effective ways to add flavor to baked goods. When you brown butter, you are simply cooking it until the milk solids begin to caramelize. Put your butter in a saucepan and set it over medium heat, swirling it every minute or two while it melts. You will continue to cook it as it melts, bubbles, and then begins to foam. When the foam begins to subside, you should be able to see little amber flecks forming on the bottom of the pan and the butter should smell really fragrant (like toasted nuts and vanilla and magic). At this point, quickly remove the butter from the heat and transfer it to another bowl to stop the cooking and let it cool to room temperature.

3. Make the cookie dough. For this recipe, we’ll mix the cooled browned butter and sugars until wet and sandy and then add eggs and vanilla to help homogenize the batter. Next comes dry ingredients, followed by walnuts and chocolate.

4. Chill the dough. This recipe only needs about 30 minutes of chilling time. You can definitely chill the dough longer if you’d like but the cookies won’t spread quite as much and they will be more round than flat. You can read all about why we chill our cookie dough here!