Carrot cake, full-fat, full-flavor

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Believe it or not, we still had carrots in storage from last year’s garden only two weeks ago. There weren’t many, and I had to put them in the refrigerator because the cellar was warming up enough to encourage magnificent sprouting. At this season, they are a tad past what you call prime, though perfectly suitable for cole slaw or including in various dishes. It seemed like it would be a good idea to use them up, and I got to thinking about carrot cake, which I really like, especially with cream cheese frosting.

Ruth Thurston in Machias sent along a very interesting carrot fruitcake and said, “The carrots make the fruitcake more moist and delicious than an ordinary fruitcake.” That made me think, since I think fruitcake has an undeservedly bad reputation, that I would save Ruth’s recipe for November or December, just when we might be thinking of holiday fruitcakes.

Then Adrienne Durkee, my neighbor down the road, sent a recipe for a Carrot Snack Cake she found in the Better Homes and Gardens New Dieters Cook Book, which described this as a reduced-calorie carrot cake. So it is possible to make one that doesn’t pack a terrific caloric wallop.

Of course, the one that caught my eye was the classic carrot cake that another islander, Maggy Reynolds, sent me. I didn’t even try to resist, even though Maggy wrote, “This is my favorite carrot cake recipe. True, it does have as much sugar as flour and the dreaded coconut to boot, but I figure that’s OK for the once or twice a year I make it.”

A woman after my own heart. Moderation, ladies and gentlemen. A nice full-flavored, rich and moist carrot cake, twice a year. And after all, you aren’t going to sit down and eat the whole thing all by yourself. (Are you?)

The only thing I changed in Maggy’s recipe is that I added a little more spice.

One more small note: Apparently another of our island neighbors, Charlotte Robinson, a prodigious baker, and Maggy were having a conversation, and Charlotte told her that she had a recipe for carrot cake that used pureed baby food carrots. How about that!

When Maggy makes this cake, she usually cooks up three or four regular carrots and purees them, and if there is more puree than the recipe needs, she just eats it.

Carrot Cake

2 cups flour

2 cups sugar

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon cloves

1 cup of oil

3 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

3/4 cup crushed pineapple

1 1/3 cup pureed carrots (3-4 sliced, approximately 21/2 cups uncooked)

1 cup of walnuts

1 cup shredded coconut

Prepare the carrots. Sift together into a large bowl all the dry ingredients-flour, sugar, baking soda, spices. In another bowl, whisk together the oil and eggs, add the vanilla, pineapple and carrots, and stir well. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix until you have stiff batter, then fold in the walnuts and coconut. Grease and flour a 9-by-13-inch baking pan or a tube pan. Bake for one hour at 350 F, or until a tester comes out clean.

Cream Cheese Icing

4 ounces cream cheese

3 tablespoons butter

11/2 cups confectioner’s sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 tablespoon of lemon juice

Let the cream cheese and butter come to room temperature and then beat in the sugar, vanilla and lemon juice until it is smooth and spreadable.

Ice the cake after it has cooled.

Yields one 9-by-13-inch cake.

Looking for …

I can see blueberry season coming. My mother-in-law used to have a good recipe for blueberry cake, not too sweet, that I liked a great deal. I don’t find it in her recipe box. Maybe one of you has a good one we could feature here?

Write to Sandy Oliver at 1061 Main Road, Islesboro 04848. E-mail tastebuds@prexar.com. For recipes, tell us where they came from. List ingredients, specify number of servings and do not abbreviate measurements. Include name, address and daytime phone number.