Greek Inspired Carrot Cake


Have some carrots and Greek yogurt you want to use up? Why not try this easy, dense, moist, delicious carrot cake? In this recipe, we used some Greek baking staples such as Greek yogurt, olive oil, citrus and almond flour and we did double duty with the ingredients to make a light and citrusy glaze and topped the cake with some yummy candied carrots for fun! You can make this cake without the glaze. It’s delicious on it’s own. Bonus… by using the food processor, there’s no need to grate the carrots!

 



We used some Greek baking staples such as Greek yogurt, olive oil, citrus and almond flour.

Serves: 8  |  Difficulty: Medium

Ingredients:

For the cake:

  • 250g of carrots (not baby carrots) (about five carrots) washed, peeled and roughly chopped 
  • 125g of Greek yogurt
  • 50 ml extra-virgin olive oil
  • 220g whole wheat pastry flour 
  • 100g almond flour
  • 1 tablespoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • ½ teaspoon nutmeg
  • ⅛ teaspoon clove
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 3 eggs room temperature
  • 150g granulated sugar
  • 1 tablespoon grated orange zest

For the glaze:

  • ½ cup Greek yogurt 
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 
  • 1 tablespoon fresh orange juice
  • ½ powdered sugar 

Steps:

  1. Preheat oven to 350°

  2. Grease an 8” cake pan and line with parchment paper. (We used a dark cake pan. If using a light cake pan, you may need a longer baking time.)

  3. Add chopped carrots to  the bowl of a food processor. Process for a few seconds until grated like texture and then add the yogurt and oil. Process again until well combined. 

  4. In a bowl, sift together the flours, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, and salt until well combined.

  5. In a separate bowl, crack in the eggs. Add the sugar and orange zest.  Whisk until light, frothy and homogenous.

  6. Add the carrot mixture to the egg mixture and mix well, then add the flour mixture. Mix until just combined.

  7. Bake about 40 minutes, rotating pan half way, until cake is golden and a tester inserted in the middle comes out clean. 

  8. While cake bakes make the glaze.

To make the glaze:

  1. Add first 3 ingredients to large bowl and whisk to mix well. Sift in the powdered sugar and whisk until smooth and well combined. To thicken the glaze, add more powdered sugar. To make the glaze thinner, add more yogurt.

  2. Let cool 10-15 minutes on a wire rack then gently invert the pan to remove the cake. Turn the top side up and let cool completely on wire rack. Drizzle cake with glaze. 

Kali Orexi!