In a return to baking I made a carrot cake yesterday — the recipe came from the Good Eats show “A Taproot Orange” and can be found at food network. This recipe made by far one of the best carrot cakes I’ve ever had. It’s incredibly high in carrot content using 12 ounces of grated carrot. I discovered that a 1lb bag of carrots does not grate into 12 ounces (even though it should).
I didn’t want to play with the recipe — I’ve never been that proficient at creating quick bread recipes that work (technically carrot cake is a muffin) — but I did want to try something a bit different so I baked the cake in a half sheet pan. I turned the oven temperature down when I put the cake in and let it bake for 20 minutes.
The goal of the sheet pan was to produce a rolled carrot cake. What it resulted in was a crumbly mass covered in frosting. The cake tasted great, was incredibly moist and didn’t look that bad with the outside frosting filling massive fissures.
My theory is that the carrot cake isn’t sturdy enough to survive rolling. Either that or I’m no longer able to roll a cake. I started with the warm cake rolled in a towel dusted with powdered sugar. Let it cool, then unrolled it to fill and re-roll. Unfortunately the cake didn’t want to release from the towel. This is where the carrot cake theory comes in — the cake is too moist and thus sticks/cracks easily. So the question of the day is whether it is the carrot cake or my technique.