Naked Carrot Cake with Ginger Ice Cream

I believe every recipe has a story.  Some may be better than others, but every recipe has one.  This one is no exception.  I call it “How Marylou’s Carrot Cake Went Naked”. (Now stop your snickering. Sit back and enjoy it.  It ends with cake and ice cream.  How bad can it be?)

Several years ago at Thanksgiving, our family’s dessert table runneth over.  Along with the traditional pumpkin pie, I had made a rum cake (a story for another time), and my sister had made both an amazing cheesecake and one of the best carrot cakes I had ever tasted in my life. When I inquired about it, my sister told me she had gotten the recipe from her sister-in-law, Marylou, and she Xeroxed a copy for me.

Not a week had passed before I began to have cravings for another piece of that cake.  Making an entire carrot cake to fill a craving for just one piece is like using an A-bomb to do the work of a hand grenade, but such was the power of Marylou’s Carrot Cake Cravings. My sister had said the recipe was incredibly easy, and she was right.  A couple cups of this, a couple cups of that, a 350 degree oven, and Wham! Before you know it, you have the sweet smell of carrot cake wafting through every corner of your home.

Now many a cake eater believes that cake is simply a clever delivery system for frosting, and we carrot-cakers know that the Cadillac of all frostings is cream cheese frosting. Carrot cake without it would be…well, a sacrilege.  So you can imagine my disappointment that cold December afternoon when, with the cake now cooled and ready to receive its creamy goodness, I realized I had forgotten to pick-up cream cheese at the grocery store that morning. 

I would have to go all the way back to the supermarket to get some.  There is nothing I hate more than to interrupt my cooking to return to the market for this or that forgotten ingredient. My cravings were now so great that had a door-to-door cream cheese frosting salesman come to my house asking $50 an ounce for the stuff, I would have gladly paid for a pound, but that was not about to happen.  As I saw it, the only way I was going to make it to the market and back was by sampling a bit of that cake sans the frosting. 

So I cut myself a big hunk and proceeded to eat it.  To my amazement, the cake was pretty darn delicious even without the frosting.  It was at once moist, dense and rustic in texture – richer than a muffin, but not quite as heavy and indulgent as the real McCoy.  I realized then that Marylou’s Carrot Cake could stand on its own au naturel, and thus, the Naked Carrot Cake was born.

Naked Carrot Cake

Ingredients

3-4 large carrots
2 cups sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour (you can supplement up to 1 cup whole wheat)
1 tablespoon good quality cinnamon, ground
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon kosher salt
4 extra large eggs, beaten
1 cup of canola oil
1-7 ounce can of unsweetened crushed pineapple with juice
7 ounces of unsweetened coconut, shredded or flaked
1 cup chopped nuts 

Preheat oven to 350° Fahrenheit. Grease and flour a 9 x 13 pan.

Shred the carrots manually. (You can use a food processor, but I think a common box shredder does a better job.)  I like my carrot cake to have a lot of texture.  So I like to use the larger shred, but if you want a more refined, cakey-like texture, use the smaller shred.  Either way, you want to shred enough carrots to fill two packed cups.

In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, flour, cinnamon, baking soda and salt well enough to ensure even distribution. A whisk is usually does a good job.

Mix in the beaten eggs, oil and pineapple with juice until the dry ingredients are just wet.  No need to over mix. 

Lastly, fold in the carrots, coconut and walnuts and pour into the pan.

I don’t adhere exactly to baking times with cake recipes.  Even with the same oven, the baking time can vary from one day to the next.  In general, this cake will take 40 to 45 minutes. The secret is to slightly under-bake it. Unfortunately, the old toothpick test won’t work here.  You’ll want to take the cake out of the oven once the center is firm. A slight jiggle of the pan and a light press on the center will help you determine doneness.  Just set your timer for 35 minutes, rotating about half way through. When the 35 minutes are up, reset the time for 10 minutes and begin checking on the cake every 3-5 minutes.

Carrot cake, with or without frosting, is not the most exciting or refined dessert for a nice dinner party. So to give it a little edge, I like to serve it with homemade ginger ice cream. The cinnamon in the cake nicely complements the ginger.  I adapted this recipe from one published by Gourmet magazine in 1998.  It’s very good and worth the effort, but if you don’t have an ice cream freezer, Haagen Dazs Five Ginger is very close to this recipe.

Ginger Ice Cream

Fresh ginger root, enough to make a quarter cup when finely shredded
½ – ¾ cup of sugar
2 tablespoons of water
4 large eggs
2 cups half-and-half
1 cup heavy cream
1¼ teaspoon good quality vanilla

You will need several pieces of equipment for this, not the least of which is a good ice cream freezer.  The recipe makes about a pint and a half, so you will probably want a 2 quart freezer at minimum.  There are several smaller electric models on the market, but I have had good success with Cuisinart ICE-30BC.  You will also need a sieve and a candy/deep fry thermometer or something similar that you can stand up in a sauce pan.

Separate the egg yolks and whisk them in a medium to large bowl. (The best tool for separating eggs is a clean hand. Crack the egg in half and pour the yolk into your hand with your fingers separated enough to allow the whites to pass through but not the yolks.)

Grate the unpeeled ginger using a rasp or Microplane Grater/Zester, enough to fill a lightly packed quarter cup.  In a saucepan, combine the ginger, sugar and water and cook over medium heat for five minutes. Add the half-and-half and bring to a simmer. Remove from heat.

Slowly pour the warm half-and-half mixture into the egg yolk bowl whisking continuously.  Once combined, pour the mixture back into the saucepan and cook over medium-low heat stirring constantly.   Using the thermometer, monitor the heat of the custard until it reaches 170° then remove it from the heat.  Do not let it come to a boil.

Work the custard through a sieve into a clean bowl and add the cream and vanilla.  Allow the custard to cool and then cover the surface with a piece of plastic wrap.  Chill in the refrigerator overnight.  You will get better results with you ice cream maker if the ingredients are good and cold.

Follow the directions on your ice cream freezer. I found that the Cuisinart model mentioned above gets the custard to a thick, stiff consistency in about 20-25 minutes in the freezer.  Pack the ice cream into an appropriately sized plastic container with an air tight lid.  You’ll want to minimize air space between the ice cream and lid. 

Allow it to harden for at least six hours before serving. A good serving size is a 3 by 3 inch piece of cake with a single packed scoop of ice cream that is slightly larger than a golf ball but smaller than a billiard ball.

Enjoy.

Tagged as: carrot cake, ginger ice cream, naked carrot cake, recipe