I still remember my first carrot cake rev­e­la­tion. I’ve always liked carrot cake, but there is one moment I can point to and say “that’s when it became my favorite.” It actu­ally became more than my favorite. It became a pur­suit. A pas­sion. I was going to own carrot cake. I was going to refine the process and pro­duce the apoth­e­osis of carrot cake.

It was a party with friends on the day fol­lowing Thanks­giving. A hol­iday tra­di­tion among mis amigos. A hol­iday recovery. Everyone brought a food item to share – some­times a left­over from the Thanks­giving feast, some­times drinks. Someone had brought a carrot cake. It was sweet and moist like carrot cake should be, but it was also spicy. I was stunned. Cayenne pepper in a cake? The roof of my head came off and the light shined in.

That was about a decade ago. Since then, I’ve studied numerous carrot cake recipes. I’ve made at least one or two carrot cakes every year and never dupli­cated a recipe. I’ve taken notes. I once made a vegan carrot cake using ground flax seeds to replace eggs. I’ve made icing, bought icing (not rec­om­mended), driz­zled a cake with caramel sauce (heaven) and topped one with pineapple slices. I’ve added every­thing from organic carrot juice to five spice powder.

For dessert this Christmas Eve, I made another carrot cake. It received very favor­able reviews. I think it com­pares well to my pre­vious efforts and is worthy of sharing with others. So, in the spirit of the season, here is my recipe and thoughts.

Carrot Cake with Coconut Frosting

Makes two 8″ round cake layers. Pre­heat your oven to 350° F.

• 2 c. flour
• 1 c. gran­u­lated sugar
• 1 c. brown sugar
• 1 t. baking soda
• 1 t. baking powder
• 1 package baby car­rots (1 lb.), processed
• 4 oz. sweet­ened coconut (~1/5 a stan­dard 14 0z. package)
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup olive oil
• spices

A note about spices. There are two spices I always use: cin­namon and cayenne pepper, 1 to 2 t. of each. After that, it’s really up to you. I sug­gest a little of what­ever you have handy that you think will work well. For my latest cake I also added ground cloves and ground ginger. Chi­nese five spice powder is always a good item to have because it has a nice mix. Nutmeg is a tra­di­tional fla­voring. I’ve been tempted sev­eral times to try adding black pepper, but I’ve never done it.

1. Grease and flour your cake pans.
2. Mix all of your dry ingre­di­ents together.
3. Sep­a­rately, mix your processed carrot with the coconut, eggs and oil and beat slightly until eggs are incorporated.
4. Add the dry ingre­di­ents to the wet ingre­di­ents a little at a time, mixing just until combined.
5. Divide the mix­ture evenly (this is impor­tant) between the two cake pans.
6. Bake for about 40 min­utes or so. The cake will be done when a tooth­pick (or chop­stick) stuck all the way through the center comes out clean.
7. Cool the cakes thor­oughly. Cooling them makes them easier to remove from the pans in one piece.

My recipe for the frosting is a lazy-man’s ver­sion of the Easy Vanilla Frosting recipe on the King Arthur Flour web­site. That’s right, the easy wasn’t easy enough after a few glasses of wine, so this one’s even easier. You can use an elec­tric mixer to make this, but it’s just as easy to make by hand.

• 6 T. unsalted butter (3/4 stick)
• 1/8 c. lard (a heaping spoonful)
• a pinch of salt
• 3 c. pow­dered sugar (I didn’t bother sifting it, frosting is not an exact science)
• 1 t. vanilla extract
• 1/8 to 1/4 c. coconut milk
• another 4 oz. sweet­ened coconut (or how­ever much you want)

You can follow the KAF recipe from here. Adjust the amount of coconut milk as needed to get the right con­sis­tency in your frosting. Add the sweet­ened coconut last.

I mod­i­fied their frosting recipe for two rea­sons: first, the recipe is huge. I would never have been able to use all that frosting; and second, I wanted a coconut frosting to go with my coconut fla­vored cake. Sweet­ened coconut flakes are just a little chewy and add a nice tex­ture to the cake. It also goes well with the carrot.