Brazilian Carrot Cake
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Not my normal post but these are not normal times. Besides, this isn't the first recipe I've posted.
I'm one of those that will, as long as supplies allow, bake and cook my way through our shelter in. Today I made Brazilian carrot cake. It's not quite the same as an American carrot cake as you'll see from the recipe below.
First, carrot cake rules:
Obviously since it contains carrot which is a vegetable, it's healthy.
If you don't ice it and serve it before evening, it's carrot bread and therefore a healthy option for breakfast, brunch, or snack.
Only when you add the frosting or icing does it become carrot cake and hence dessert.
This recipe is the family recipe of one of my daughter's coworkers. I can only imagine it's from some Brazilian grandmother and hence the measurement of "3 large carrots." It makes me think of recipes that I'd get from bubbe or my mothers bubbe - "add 2 cups of sugar." Of course she was talking about 2 empty yartzeit glasses of sugar. I have a relative who followed around here grandmother an before she added any ingredient for a recipe put it in a standard measure to convert the recipe to something that we could make sense of today.
Okay, now on to the recipe:
Ingredients
Cake
- 3 carrots, peeled and sliced)
- 3 eggs (large)
- 1 cup oil
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 cups flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
Brigadeiro sauce
- 1 can sweetened condensed milk
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 4 tablespoons of cocoa (or use some other chocolate and melt it in)
Buttermilk Glaze
I sometimes use this instead of the brigadeiro sauce
- 2/3 cups buttermilk
- 1 to 2 cups powdered sugar
Directions
Cake
Preheat oven to 350 Prepare pan (I line the bottom with parchment and grease)
- Mix sugar, flour, baking powder in a bowl
- Blend carrots in a blender
- Add oil and eggs to blender and blend all together
- Fold carrot mixture into dry ingredients
- pour into prepared pan
- bake for ~40 mintues
Bigadeiro sauce (if using)
- combine all ingredients in saucepan
- cook, stirring until thickened (about 10 minutes) You'll know it's thick enough when you drag your spoon across the pan and you can see the bottom. It will thicken up considerably when it cools so better if it's looser rather than thicker. spread on cake while warm.
Buttermilk glaze (if using)
- whisk together glaze ingredients until smooth.
- poke holes all over cake with a fork or knife
- pour / spread glaze on cake