Healthier carrot cake for Easter
Easter is just around the corner and when I think Easter I think bunnies, and bunnies mean carrots, and carrots mean carrot cake. Who doesn’t like a cake in a festive period?
It was the first time I tried to make a cake with carrots, so I asked my mother if she knew a nice recipe to start from. She looked in her big recipe folder where she stores all kinds of recipes she had found interesting over the past few years. After a bit of searching, we stumbled upon an old advertisement flyer from a local supermarket, it caught my attention because of the nice white topping on top of the cake!
While reading the recipe I noticed that they used a lot of butter, sugars and even cream cheese! My boyfriend wanted to try it out as it was, but as you know me, I always try to make it (a little bit) healthier! So we started to think of ways we could replace some of the unhealthier parts of the cake, starting with the topping which we really liked because it looked so yummy! We wanted to replace the cream cheese with yoghurt, but of course it would just drip off, so we used chia seeds as a thickener. For the cake, we used oats instead of plain white flour and a new recipe was born!
Fun fact! Did you know that carrots were used as a substitute for sugar in the mediaval ages? That’s how people started using carrots in their batter.
Ingredients:
For the cake
- 200g carrots
- 175g oats
- 1/2 sachet of baking powder (10g)
- 100g sugar
- 75g walnuts
- 3 eggs
- 150ml vegetable oil
- 25g raisins
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
For the topping
- 1 orange zested
- few drops of lemon juice
- 250g plain yogurt
- 3tbsp chia seeds
- 1tbsp maple syrup
Recipe:
- Preheat the oven on 170°C.
- Mix the eggs, vegetable oil and sugar in a big bowl until you have a smooth mixture.
- Put the oats in a blender and blend until you have oat flour. Transfer the oat flour to the big bowl and stir well.
- Add in the baking powder, nutmeg and cinnamon.
- Peel and grate the carrots, add them to the batter.
- Chop the walnuts and add them to the batter. Set a handful of walnuts aside for the topping.
- Now add the raisins and stir well until you have a smooth batter.
- Transfer the batter into your baking tin. Grease the tin if it’s not a silicone one.
- Bake in the preheated oven for about 50-60 minutes.
- For the topping: mix the yogurt with the chia seeds, the orange zest, a few drops of lemon juice, and some maple syrup. Stir until everything is fully combined and set it in the fridge until the carrot cake is baked and has cooled down. The chia seeds will make sure the yogurt gets a thicker consistency and can therefore perfectly replace the unhealthy frosting.
- Before serving, spread the yogurt on top of the carrot cake and top it off with some chopped walnuts.
Let me know what you think in the comment section below or tag me on Instagram @afoodiesworldcom!