Recipe of the Week: Carrot Cake!

Captain Create Bakes a Carrot Cake

While the Easter Bunny seems to have an affinity for leaving chocolate and jelly beans, real bunnies prefer carrots, and so does Captain Create! Carrot cake is easy to make, and with whole grain flour, currants or raisins, and all the carrots, its got a lot in it to keep your body going strong, which is great for hunting up hidden Easter eggs!

How are carrots good for you?

Carrots are a power vegetable, and are recognized for tasting great and being useful in both savory and sweet recipes. They have very little saturated fat or cholesterol. They are an excellent source of dietary fiber, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin K, and potassium. They are also a good source of thiamin, niacin, vitamin B6, folate, and manganese. All those vitamins and minerals will be hard at work in your cells helping your body move all that carrot cake nutrition around your body to get to your muscles, brain, and eyes so that they keep right on working like they should.

How do you bake a Whole Wheat Carrot Cake?

This recipe bakes quickly and looks great when its frosted because you bake one thin, flat cake, then stack it up with layers of cream cheese frosting, then top it with more frosting and toasted nuts!

The tricks to getting the layers stacked up neatly is:

1- after the cake cools, pop it in the freezer for a bit. Frozen cake layers cut and stack a little bit more neatly and are less likely to fall apart.

2- Another trick is to keep the parchment paper on the bottom of the cake until you’ve stacked it up (flip the cake so that the paper is up), then peel the paper off and frost it.

The frosting part is easy, and is something kids can help with, because the cake is going to be covered in toasted nuts, so the icing just has to make it onto the cake, and doesn’t have to be perfect.

You can assemble the cake on a tray, fancy plate, or cut out a stiff piece of cardboard, cover it with foil, and use it as a cake tray. We have also baked this cake in a few smaller round pans, to make a round cake instead of a square cake. The trick is to be sure there is parchment under the cake and bake thin layers, then stack it up just like you would the rectangle cake.