Carrot Cake Day

My birthday is just around the corner and that only means one thing to me… It’s carrot cake time!

My favorite cake is carrot cake. I have no idea why… something about cooked vegetables in sweets makes my taste buds happy.  For instance sweet potato pie… strawberry rhubarb pie… these have vegetables in them.  And they are a few of my favorite things.

Now there are a lot of variations to carrot cake. My sister bakes me the best (not that I’m biased or anything). I have to grate my own carrots for her to mix in. She adds crushed pineapple and skips the walnut, for my preference. She also uses whole wheat pastry flour, which is great if you are trying to avoid the more processed all-purpose bleached flour and get more fiber in your diet.

If you are health/calorie conscious, there are many ways to customize your own variation of this cake. I have seen suggestions for using more pineapple rather than sugar for the sweetness, relying on more walnuts or even coconut for flavor or using buttermilk in substitution for oil. The wonders of this cake are in the many ways you can change ingredients to get the right taste or nutrition from it as you prefer.

For a good starter recipe I’d suggest following Bob’s Red Mill’s.  This recipe comes from the company’s whole wheat pastry flour bag and my sister has been using it for years.  She exchanges olive oil for the canola oil, skips the walnuts, adds more carrot and uses butter instead of margarine.  You could go farther and use low-fat cream cheese or skip the frosting all together! The cake is so moist it’s really not necessary!

Let’s be honest, we all need some sweets now and again. If you are on a weight-loss diet, or just following a controlled and healthy diet, you should give yourself a day to enjoy a little sweets.  Especially on your birthday!