Carrot cake is a classic dessert dish that is moist, dense, and soft with flecks of sweet carrot bits. It is typically frosted with cheese icing or coated with powdered sugar. Some like to add orange zest for a tangy bite. To make a simple carrot cake, heat the oven to 356 degrees F and grease or line a cake tin. Sift together flour, baking powder, sugar, cinnamon, and bicarbonate of soda. In a bowl, beat eggs and citrus zest together with a pinch of oil. Stir in grated carrots and fold the wet mixture to the flour mixture. Fold in walnuts and pineapples if you want the enhanced flavor. Place the batter into the tin and bake for an hour and twenty minutes or until a skewer pierced in the center of the cake comes out clean.

To make the frosting, beat butter and icing sugar together until soft and then beat in the cream cheese until all the ingredients are well incorporated. Place the mixture in the fridge to chill and thicken so that it becomes spreadable. Spread icing in even layers all over the cake and decorated as you please. Some like to garnish their carrot cake with toasted nuts like pecan or walnuts. Some like to add applesauce instead of pineapple while others obliterate these extra ingredients all together to bring out the true carrot flavor.

Applesauce and pineapple, however, can both be added to enhance the flavor and moisture of the cake. You make need to bake the cake longer when working with these added ingredients. Using carrots in sweet cakes have been done since the medieval times. At that time, sweeteners were expensive and scarce, and substitutes like carrots and sugar beets, which contain more sugar than other vegetables, were used to make sweet desserts.