A trip down carrot lane

For Pesach the fridge geography often becomes creative as the bins are stuffed to the brim with potato, onion, lettuce, and carrots. For reasons still unknown to either E or I, I didn’t use one carrot for the entire Pesach. So, we had about 2½ pounds of the stuff that I needed to use sooner than later.

I love raw carrots, but knew I couldn’t eat that many before they went bad, so I decided to do something I don’t often do.

I baked.

I pulled out my new favourite Gluten Free Cookbook and looked up the carrot cake recipe and went to town. I should note to the masses (of my three readers) that I do not own many appliances due to lack of space (we measure the kitchen walls in Inches) and thus questioning of need. Besides the necessary sink, stove/oven, and fridge we have a microwave (which I use more for the timer than anything), and battling for countertop space is a 2-slice toaster, a rice cooker/vegetable steamer, e’s blender, and a crock pot. There is a mini $10 food processor but I rarely use it as it doesn’t hold much and is a pain to clean.

Do you see something missing on the list (ok, it would normally live in a drawer or a cabinet)? Something that has been around since 1908 and has made life — baking life — much easier?

That’s right, I don’t even own a manual egg beater, much less an electric one. I don’t bake much anymore so I can’t quite justify precious kitchen space to an appliance I won’t often use.

In baking this cake I proved to myself that while it was a slightly more physical exercise and slighty more time intensive, I don’t need an electric mixer to bake a cake and ice it from scratch.

I emailed my mom about this, I was surprised at how many processes surrounding cake making and icing came back to me as if I hadn’t taken a twenty year break from them. I’m slightly worried that I’ve re-caught the baking bug. Why worried? It’s getting warmer (who wants to turn on an oven for any amount of time) and I have a hard enough time finding people to give my knits to. Since most people I know live in far off states, who will I give all these sugar-laden confections to?

Sure, this one wasn’t perfect, but for a first carrot cake and one produced in what I consider quite imperfect conditions, it was quite yummy.

How do I know?

There wasn’t any left by the time I got around to trying to take a photo for this post.

I used up the remainder of the carrots by making a Carrot Soup which was yummy, but not filling as a main course.

Sources:
Wikipedia accessed 20090419 (yeah, I used wikipedia as a SOURCE. deal. it gave me the 1908 figure which sounded reasonable to me.)

• Category: food