carrot

leftover oatmeal cake (better than its reputation)

by Eva on February 27, 2013

It is not my fault that I am craving sweets constantly, it’s the C21 H30 O5. Yes cortisol generally known as stress hormone. Sounds like a flimsy excuse? In this case I would never admit that you are right!

As I usually don’t want to buy something to eat on the run and I know I’ll be hungry in a whim, I like to have a sandwich or other healthy alternative on hand when I leave my home. But I bring most of it right back at night. What happened? This nasty stress hormone tricked me again and again and again. I occasionally save the world or just the tiler with getting the requested bull nose tiles (did you know there is such thing? Me neither!). Fighting the Atlanta traffic, hunting down this ~~damn~~ needed tiles, all this means stress to me and my craving for sweets kicks in. Than I pass by this doughnut store, I just can’t close my eyes, I am driving right! Right? So I end up eating this tasty unhealthy stuff and don’t even feel bad about it. Because again it’s the cortisol…

Some weeks ago Mr. F and I took a break from all this renovating and joint a cooking class with Les Dames d’Escoffier, fancy name for fancy ladies: Cynthia Graubart, Tamie Cook, Virginia Willis, Pastry Chef Heather Hurlbert, Caterer Dana Dabruzzi and Mixologist Lara Creasy. The funny thing is we just met most of them at the food blog south conference in Birmingham, Al. It was more than a cooking class, we enjoyed a whole menu, received great advise for wine pairing and table decorating. But it hit me when Heather Hurlbert prepared the dessert: oatmeal spice cake with brown sugar pecan icing and orange caramelized apples. This piece of cake deserved a heck of a name, it was spot on. I loved the idea to have a use for leftover breakfast oatmeal, it’s like recycling! I skipped a lot of her original recipe, I didn’t wanted a dessert. I wanted whole grains. I wanted something to take with me, something I can nibble on while I stuck in line at a hardware store. I sadly said good bye to the icing and caramel and even reduced the method to the limit. I took as many shortcuts as possible, renovating is a tough job and I wasn’t in the mood for extra work. Since then I made this cake with many modifications, the following one is the latest, but another very successful one had been apple with cinnamon and roasted hazelnuts (see below in the notes).

gingered oatmeal cake with carrots

ingredients

190 ml / 3/4 cup water
50 g / 1/2 cup old fashioned oats
or 200 g / 3/4 cup leftover oatmeal
175 g / 4 midsize carrots, peeled
140 g / 1 1/8 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
130 g / 2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
60 g / 1/2 stick unsalted butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp fresh ginger, grated
2 Tbsp granulated sugar (for topping)

instructions

In a small saucepan add water and oats and cook 5 minutes, let cool. Skip if you use leftover oatmeal.
Preheat your oven to 175 C / 350 F and grease your 18 cm / 7 inch springform pan.
In a medium bowl measure whole wheat flour, baking powder, salt and set aside.
In your food processor shred the carrots. Remove the shredding disc and add the chopping blades.
Add sugar, egg, butter, vanilla extract, ginger and process for a few seconds.
Add dry ingredients, pulse until just combined. Pour batter into springform pan and sprinkle with 2 Tbsp sugar.
Bake for 40 to 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool 10 minutes before removing from baking pan.
Serve with yoghurt (or whipped cream) and sprinkle with freshly grated lime zest.

variations

Skip the carrots and the ginger and add one medium apple (peeled and grated), 75 g / 2.6 oz. hazelnuts, (roasted and ground) and 1/2 tsp cinnamon (ground).
You can use all purpose flour (140 g / 1 1/8 cups) instead of whole wheat flour.
Certainly you can use a box grater and a mixer instead of a food processor.

{ 3 comments }

carrot, hazelnut and tahini cake with lime cream cheese frosting

by Eva on September 20, 2012

Did you miss me last week? I took a week off, actually two weeks because the last post had been a guest post from the lovely Sandy from confiture de vivre.

The truth is and I am just saying it: I was busy but in a positive way. My family had been visiting me, I had been trying hard to soak up every moment of this rare days where we are all together and enjoying ourselves. My last three weeks had been the best of this year, we celebrated my birthday, had been on vacation in Florida, had the best food Memphis has to offer and did some amazing baking, grilling and cooking. I had been marveled about seeing all the food disappearing faster than I can keep supplies coming.

Also the first time since three years, we had all been on the same continent for my little sisters birthday. I promised her a birthday cake and she chose a carrot cake. Call it karma but I already bookmarked a recipe for a carrot cake in the new baking book I got for my birthday two weeks earlier. It took me some minutes to talk her into this because she thought tahini belongs into hummus and not into her birthday cake. Point taken! I can’t deny I felt not just like a risk-taker but also like a thrill-seeker with an apron as I did not just add tahini but also olive oil to the batter. And you wouldn’t see this recipe here today if it wouldn’t turned out good. Not the right words: it was one of the best carrot cakes ever and I had ~~a few~~ a lot…

I adapted this recipe from Dan Lepard’s “Short & Sweet“. Many of you might know him from his Guardian column. I have to admit, I didn’t, I learned about this baking book in an article and was even more eager to lay my hands on it, as I read somewhere (maybe a review?) that it would be the only thing to save if your house would burn down. And it has to be a good baking book if I make my sister order it in Britain and bring it over in her suitcase all the way from Germany. It started with one bookmark for the carrot cake and now has colorful post-its all over, next on my list: banana blondie from page 204 or here. How does brazil nut toffee sound to you? Yes I thought so.

carrot, hazelnut and tahini cake with lime cream cheese frosting

Adapted from Dan Lepard’s Short & Sweet available here and here. And check out his video here.

I only have extra virgin olive oil on hand, if you have a mild and inexpensive olive oil in you pantry you can use this instead and skip the vegetable oil, this would be 125 ml / 1/2 cup altogether. If you don’t want to use olive oil at all use the same amount of sunflower (like mentioned in Short & Sweet) or other neutral vegetable oil.

The original recipe calls for pomegranate syrup or black treacle, I used sugar-beet syrup (Zuckerrübensirup which is popular in the area in Germany where my hometown is, but it’s hard to get here (yes we smuggled it). Though I was able to find some from time to time in a well stocked supermarket. I mention black treacle in the recipe instead.

ingredients:

75 g / 1/4 cup tahini (sesame paste)

75 ml / 1/4 cup + 1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil (or vegetable oil)

50 ml / 1/4 cup vegetable oil

3 Tbsp black treacle (dark syrup)

225 g / 1 heaping cup turbinado sugar or light brown sugar

1 + 1/4 Tbsp orange zest (from about 1 orange)

3 large eggs, divided

100 ml / 7 Tbsp fresh orange juice

100 g / 3/4 cup roasted chopped hazelnuts

200 g / 1 3/4 cups finely grated carrots

175 g all-purpose flour

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp fresh ground nutmeg

instructions:

Preheat your oven to 175 C / 350 F and grease your 24 cm / 9.5 inch springform pan.

In a small bowl measure and mix dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and set aside.

In a large bowl mix tahini, oil, treacle or other dark syrup, sugar and orange zest. Add one whole egg and two egg yolks (save the two egg whites for later) mix until well incorporated.

Add orange juice, hazelnuts, carrots and stir well. Add dry ingredients and stir until just combined.

Beat remaining egg whites until soft peaks form and fold into the batter. Place batter into springform pan and bake 35 to 40 minutes until a skewer inserted into the center comes out without crumbs clinging to it.

Let cool completely on a wire rack before applying the lime cream cheese frosting.

lime cream cheese frosting

Also adapted from Dan Lepard’s Short & Sweet. Check out his book for more tips on frosting!

ingredients:

1 package cream cheese (226 g / 8 oz.)

110 g / 1 stick unsalted butter

finely grated zest of one lime

100 g / 3/4 + 1 Tbsp cup powdered sugar

Make sure all ingredients are very soft otherwise they won’t incorporate.

instructions:

In a medium mixing bowl beat butter, sugar and about a third of the cream cheese. Add remaining cream cheese and continue mixing until smooth and fluffy.

Spread frosting evenly on top and wall of the carrot cake, keep refrigerated and the cake stays fresh for several days. Mine lasted 4 days without drying out or loosing flavor.

{ 2 comments }

carrot bread with poppy seeds

by Eva on March 3, 2012

This is me adapting my own recipe. Actually that’s what I do all the time, there is not one recipe that I would call completed. Not one that stays as it is. There is always something I like to change or swap, apples for pears, raisins for dried cranberries just to start easy. But I also changed recipes form savory to sweet or from meat lover to vegetarian. There are many reasons for that, at first I think it’s boring to eat the same over and over again. Then it depends what I am up to, sometimes it has to be a chocolate filling and not fruits. I think the main reason is quiet simple, I ran out of the asked ingredients and I am too lazy to hit the road for grocery shopping.

Well I don’t end up with something enjoyable all the time, that’s the risk if you manipulate recipes. But that’s fine, it might have also been the invention of the best oven soup ever although it should become casserole dish when grown up. Putting cheese on it is always a life saver…

This bread recipe caught my notice as I was working on my blog moving (copy and paste, copy and paste, that’s how the non web designer do it). I stopped at this post and I was embarrassed of the bad pictures. That’s maybe the reason why it didn’t get the attention and love I had hopped for, I truly understand. So here you get a second chance, I simplified the recipe and added more poppy seeds (I wrote poopy seeds for the fifth time now with no hidden thought, thank you spellchecker).

carrot bread with poppy seeds

If you don’t have rye flour on hand, substitute with all purpose flour or whole wheat flour. If you want to skip the healthy flours and just use all purpose flour that’s fine, but start with less milk and add more only if necessary because whole grains are more “thirsty” than regular flours.

1 1/2 tablespoons / 20 g / 0.7 oz. butter
1 1/4 cup / 300 ml milk

2 cups / 200 g (about 4) carrots finely grated
2 cups / 270 g / 9.6 oz. whole wheat flour
1 cup / 120 g / 4.3 oz. all-purpose flour or bread flour
3/4 cup / 80 g / 2.9 oz. rye flour (I used stone ground)
1/3 cup / 50 g / 1.8 oz. poppy seeds
4 teaspoons dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
2 teaspoons salt

Heat the milk and then add the butter, the butter will melt in the milk and cools it at the same time. Make sure the butter and milk mix cools down until lukewarm before you add it to the remaining ingredients.
Add everything into a large mixing bowl. Use a dough hook and a stand mixer or knead by hand for at least 3 minutes. Add more milk or flour if necessary and just a little bit at the time, you should end up with a slightly sticky but well manageable dough.
Cover the mixing bowl and let rise for 45 minutes.

Grease your loaf pan or line with parchment paper. Carefully punch down the dough and put it into the prepared loaf pan. Let rise for a further 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 190 C / 375 F. Make some cuts on the top of your bread and bake 40-45 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack before you slice it.

For a even more crunchy crust: start baking at 220 C / 430 F for 10 minutes then reduce heat to 190 C / 375 F and continue baking for 20-25 minutes.

{ 3 comments }

carrot-poppy seed-oat-bread

by Eva on June 28, 2010

There is a big thing going on about bread in Germany. You can get there the biggest variety of breads and the other sorts like rolls (Broetchen) and pastries. One reason
may be it is the biggest bread-eating nation. I grow up while eating a lot of sandwiches. There is no right translation for what we call Brotzeit, but I would say it is an old fashioned word for having a snack or meal which contains bread. My family was great in Brotzeit, we use to meet in the evening and eat fresh baked bread and rolls with all kinds of sausage, cheese, eggs and salads. It is a great meal which don’t need to be prepared for hours and is so versatile.

Hungry for a bread I was searching in my kitchen for some ingredients and found some carrots. I have eaten carrot bread before but never baked one by my own (they usually end up in a carrot cake yummy). I also found some seeds and decided to give poppy seeds a try.You may think there are not enough poppy seeds in this bread, you could be right but this was all I had and please add some if you like them or substitute with other seeds if not.
I soaked the oats because I wanted their nutrition but not chew on hard oats. You may add some milk or flour until the dough is clearing the sides of the bowl while kneading.

These bread goes well with everything from hearty cheese to jam.

carrot-poppy seed-oat-bread

2 cups / 200 g carrots (about 4)
3 cups / 350 g whole wheat flour
1 cup / 120 g all-purpose flour
1/2 cup / 60 g old fashioned oats
0.8 oz / 23 g poppy seeds
4 teaspoons dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 tablespoon / 20 g butter
1 1/4 cup / 300 ml milk
butter for the pan

Grate the carrots finely and press out the juice with your hands.
Heat the milk and the butter until lukewarm and put the oats into the milk and let soak for about 10 minutes.
Put the flour, poppy seeds, dry yeast, salt, sugar, carrots and milk mix in a mixing bowl. Use a dough hook or let knead by hand for about 3 minutes.
Cover the mixing bowl with a damp fabric and let rise for 30 minutes (there is more about yeast doughs in the previous post).
Butter the pan or baking sheet and I sprinkled the pan and the loaf with some oats.
Cover the hands with some flour so the dough don’t stick on your fingers and try to form a roll if you use a baking sheet or you put it in a loaf pan. Make some cuts on the top and let rise for a further 15 minutes. Preheat the oven to 370 Fahrenheit or 185 Celsius.
Sprinkle the top with water drops that will make a nice crispy crust and bake the bread for 45 minutes or until golden brown on the top. Let cool on a wire rack.

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leftover oatmeal cake (better than its reputation)