Talk:Carrot cake

Questions and comments

• Does anyone know how much carrot is in the carrot cake?
• I make a pretty wicked carrot cake with about three cups of shredded carrot. Wiki books has a carrot cake recipe here [1] but mine is more robust and spicier with oranges in it, too. I'm going to make a carrot cake later this week for holiday feasting, in fact! CaptainCarrot 06:56, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

• And please can someone add more history. Was it originally more carrots than its present day form? And also, do modern supermarket carrot cakes contain carrots, or just flaouring and additives?

Added some more history. --Alex 15:09, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

• Personally, I find carrot cake to be the best of all cakes.

• You mean to tell me that carrot cake actually has carrots???

Amazing.
--Cumbiagermen 05:25, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

• And on a more serious note, shouldn't this article still be a stub? --Cumbiagermen 05:28, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

• Having just made a carrot cake, I can say that for a medium size cake, 8 oz of carrots (three to four carrots) is the typical amount. I would not doubt that store bought carrot cakes do indeed have carrots, just perhaps not as many or of unsatisfactory quality.

It may also be worth noting that carrot cake is, according to Alton Brown, not actually a cake: it is a quick bread, and thus more closely resembles a muffin in texture and preparation (large, irregular crumb spacing as opposed to the cake's finer and more evenly distributed crumb).

I agree, this article seems more of a stub than not. Alex 18:44, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Beefed things up a bit. Hopefully moving out of stub territory now. --Alex 15:09, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

The popularity of carrot cake was probably revived in Britain because of rationing

I think I was watching 'The Great British Bakeoff' and they mentioned WWII era cooking. One of the baking examples was using carrots in place of peaches. :O Because the peaches were so hard to get, but people wanted peach pies / tarts, the closest thing in appearance was carrots. And potato (with oil I think) would be used to imitate the pastry, because butter & flour were also rationed. Eat your heart out Heston, that's one mockery of a peach pie. :D When sugar and flour turned up again, I think that may go partially to explaining the re-emergence of the carrot based desserts; as I'm guessing most of us are fans of the carroty cake and realise it tastes darn good. Particularly if you have access to cream cheese, etc. Easily on a par with overly sugared peach pies. In the 60's / 70's loads of people were still into the 'grow your own' theme of allotments and the war; enter "The Good Life" (1975) and Felicity "Hawt" Kendal. Peach trees are not native to the UK, and growing any kind of exotic fruit here takes effort. Carrots in the other dirty hippy's hand... carrots grow fine. So... an ingredient they could easily grow in their gardens + sugar / flour / cheese / spice availability = carrot cake surge. "We plant the seed, nature grows the seed and then we eat the seed. We plant the seed, nature grows the seed and then we eat the seed. We plant the seed, nature grows the seed and then we eat the seed." - YouTube, 'Neil plants a seed'. `.P

Carrots and flavour

The introductory paragraph in this article read that carrots do not enhance the flavour of the cake, only its texture and appearance. This is false, as one can easily tell by tasting a carrot cake, but also contradicts the later historical statement that carrots were used as sweeteners in the Middle Ages. I have tweaked the sentence in question. A moot point perhaps, but hey.

Medieval/Renaissance cake?

I just came back from renaissance fair, and according to the brochure, cake from that era are often thick, spicy, and dense for the sake of perservation. I have a feeling that carrot cake would be the cake that survived from that period since it's thick, spicy, and dense. Anyone agree? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.126.75.181 (talk) 02:05, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

This is an interesting post http://groups.msn.com/FoodiesCorner/cookingquestion.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=6103

"In the Middle Ages in Europe, when sweeteners were scarce and expensive, carrots were used in sweet cakes and desserts. In Britain...carrot puddings...often appeared in recipe books in the 18th and 19th centuries. Such uses were revived in Britain during the second World War, when the Ministry of Food disseminated recipes for carrot Christmas pudding, carrot cake, and so on and survive in a small way to the present day. Indeed, carrot cakes have enjoyed a revival in Britain in the last quarter of the 20th century. They are perceived as 'healthy' cakes, a perception fortified by the use of brown sugar and wholemeal flour and the inclusion of chopped nuts, and only slightly compromised by the cream cheese and sugar icing whcih appears on some versions." ---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 141)

"In her New York Cookbook (1992), Molly O'Neill says that George Washington was served a carrot tea cake at Fraunces Tavern in lower Manhattan. The date: November 25, 1783. The occasion: British Evacuation Day. She offers an adaptation of that early recipe, which was printed in The Thirteen Colonies Cookbook (1975) by Mary Donovan, Amy Hatrack, and Frances Schull. It isn't so very different from the carrot cakes of today. Yet strangely, carrot cakes are noticeably absent from American cookbooks right through the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth. Before developing a new pudding-included carrot and spice cake mix, Pillsbury researched carrot cake in depth, even staged a nation-wide contest to locate America's first-published carrot cake recipe. Their finding: A carrot cake in The Twentieth Century Bride's Cookbook published in 1929 by a Wichita, Kansas, woman's club. Running a close second was a carrot cake printed in a 1930 Chicago Daily News Cookbook...Several carrot cake contestants also sent Pillsbury a complicated, two-day affair that Peg Bracken had included in one of her magazine columns sometime in the late '60s or early '70s...Whatever its origin, carrot cake didn't enter mainstream America until the second half of this century." ---The American Century Cookbook: The Most Popular Recipes of the 20th Century, Jean Anderson [Clarkson Potter:New York] 1997 (p. 435) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.28.92.5 (talk) 15:12, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Article corrupted?

I accessed this article for the first time today, it seems to end a little short, and this was in the body: "Insert non-formatted text here==History== James Madison’s Presidency • Nonintercourse Act (1809)- • Macon’s Bill #2- • War of 1812- o “War Hawks”- o Causes o Campaign o Battle of New Orleans o Results o Hartford Convention • Impact of War of 1812 Election of 1816 Monroe and the “Era of Good Feelings” • On the Outside; What the American People Saw • Underneath; What sectional differences emerged Cultural Nationalism • Patriotic Themes • Early Art and Literature Economic Nationalism • Clay’s American System o Tariff of 1816 o Panic of 1819 Key Domestic Issues • Realignment within the Republican Party • Growing Factionalism o Divisive Issues o Missouri Compromise (36’30) Foreign Affairs • Rush-Bagot Agreement • Convention of 1818 (49th parallel) • Adams-Onis Treat of 1819 (the Transcontinental Treaty) • Monroe Doctrine (1823) 1824 Election • Several “Sectional” Candidates • End of “Era of Good Feelings” • Adams Could Not Accomplish Much o “Corrupt Bargain” o Jackson Supporters Struck at Every Opportunity o Tariff Issues Divisive (1824) Sectional Differences Grew as Nation Grew • The Issues (Tariffs, Land, Internal Improvements , the Bank, Slavery) • Spokesmen (WestClay, South Calhoun, North Webster)" Surely this is some error on the server level? This doesn't seem to relate even tangentially to Carrot Cake. --Knnos (talk) 17:33, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Green carrots

Does anyone know why the carrots in the cake turn green sometimes? Rube Goldberg1234 (talk) 01:08, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Popularity

I do not know whether this is informative enough to go in the article, but according to a Radio Times poll published in July 2011, carrot cake is the most popular cake in the United Kindom (chocolate cake only finished second). ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:24, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, it was not in July - it was actually the Radio Times for 12-18 March 2011. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 19:35, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Wet sugar

Is sugar a wet ingredient? The article says so... Glatisant (talk) 00:19, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, sugar is considered a wet ingredient in recipes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.166.125.151 (talk) 21:04, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

Yep, totally. Odd, yes, but true. Eman235/talk 21:59, 9 November 2014 (UTC)