I can’t remember the first time I had carrot cake, but I’m sure it wasn’t until I was well into my adult years. It’s strange now that I think about it because my mother used to make a mean carrot salad. The basic ingredients aren’t all that different except for the mayonnaise she’d dollop in the huge bowl of grated carrots and raisins before stirring in some sugar, and I’ll bet I can find more than one recipe for carrot cake that calls for mayo, too. Mind you, this would be much to the complete horror of my husband who steers clear of anything that suggests mayo is an ingredient.
Other than cheesecake or an occasional pineapple upside down cake made in a skillet, my mother’s cakes came from a box, as did mine for years. Can carrot cake actually be made from a box mix? Perhaps that’s why I don’t remember ever tasting one. I could blame it on family members more inclined to request chocolate cake: chocolate peanut butter, German chocolate, and even a chocolate mint cake that unfortunately reminded more than one of us of toothpaste. Sadly, there were no requests for carrot cake.
In the years since, I’ve learned that everyone seems to have made carrot cake but me and relies upon a favorite recipe. I, on the other hand, have only made it twice: the first time, I used a good friend’s recipe (sans the crushed pineapple she says she never adds) which was delicious; the second time, I decided to look for a recipe that was made with olive oil. Most of the recipes I’ve considered use from 3/4 to 1-1/2 cups of oil, so if oil is going into a cake, why not make it monosaturated?
Perhaps it might soothe concerns about butter, mascarpone and sugar as one bites into this fabulously luscious cake.
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