The icing on the cake
Your votes are in, and carrot cake is the Kiwi favourite, writes Ewan Sargent.
In the end it wasn’t even close. Carrot cake is definitively New Zealand’s favourite cake, according to the polls Stuff launched on Tuesday.
Britain had voted lemon drizzle cake as its top cake, so Stuff asked what ours was.
Carrot cake, you said very firmly.
Second was banana cake and third was chocolate cake, but even combined their votes didn’t match carrot cake.
At last count, about 6870 had voted on the Stuff poll and carrot cake got 2690 of them. That’s about 40 per cent of the entire vote from the 10 choices.
Banana had 1510 votes and chocolate 735.
The same poll also conducted on Neighbourly got another 1560 votes and exactly the same result, with carrot cake far ahead of banana and chocolate.
So why is carrot cake so popular?
Stuff readers suggest the cream cheese icing might have a lot to do with it.
‘‘Ditch the carrot cake and just pass me a bowl of cream cheese icing,’’ wrote one commenter.
‘‘People don’t like carrot cake. People like cream cheese icing. Slap that on a chocolate cake and the chocolate wins by a mile,’’ wrote another.
And yet another said: ‘‘I like carrot cake, but yes the cream cheese icing is delicious. I’m not fussed on chocolate cake. I would happily have a lemon cake with cream cheese icing though.’’
Carrot cake’s history is a little murky, but clearly it comes from Europe and Britain.
The World Carrot Museum’s website says the modern carrot cake is most likely an evolution of the carrot puddings enjoyed in Medieval Europe.
Carrots are sweet and moist and a useful sugar substitute. Sugar rationing during World War II helped the rise of carrot cakes in Britain, which would have flowed through to New Zealand.
Carrotcakelady.com says the cakes became common in the United States in restaurants as a novelty item in the 1960s. That’s also likely when the cakes linked up with the cream cheese icing. But they outlasted the novelty and became a top food fad of the 1970s.
Carrot cakes have a largely unjustified reputation for being healthier than other cakes.
The word ‘‘carrot’’ helps. But there’s nothing particularly healthy about the usual recipe, which comes loaded with oil, sugar, eggs, and coconut, and then there’s the icing everyone loves with its cheese, butter and icing sugar.
Like most longstanding recipes, there are arguments over what should be in or out. Pineapple and raisins are one dispute. Walnuts is the classic nut, but that can also be changed.
Here’s Sam Mannering’s ‘‘best-ever’’ carrot cake recipe that he says comes straight from his mum.
Sam Mannering’s best-ever carrot cake
Cake
❚ 375ml light oil
❚ 480g brown sugar
❚ 4 eggs
❚ 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
❚ Zest 1 orange
❚ 280g wholemeal flour
❚ 11⁄2 teaspoons cinnamon
❚ 1 teaspoon salt
❚ About 3 cups of grated carrot
❚ 120g chopped walnuts
❚ 2 teaspoon baking soda
Icing
❚ 200g cream cheese
❚ 120g icing sugar
❚ 60g melted butter
❚ 1 teaspoon vanilla
❚ Zest 1 orange
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius.
Line a round springform cake tin with baking paper.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the oil and sugar. Beat in the eggs one by one, followed by the vanilla and orange zest, and mix well.
Stir in the flour, cinnamon and salt, then fold in the carrot and walnuts.
Finally, add the baking soda and quickly stir in well.
Pour this mixture into the lined tin and bake for about 50min, until a skewer or knife poked into the middle comes out clean.
Remove from the oven and let it cool down completely in the tin.
Once completely cool, remove from the tin and transfer carefully to a plate.
Combine all five icing ingredients and beat together well then spread thickly on the cake.