Sourdough Carrot Cake

This was sourdough carrot cake.

It was one of the King Arther's Flour's recipes I would like to try with extra unfed sourdough starter that is always generated when I feed my starter. For just two of us, I halved the recipe to bake with a 8" x 8" pan instead of a 9" x 13" pan. Although a cake with carrot sounds healthy, carrot cakes often contain a lot of fat (usually vegetable oil) and sugar. To make my cake healthier, I adapted a few tips from a recipe for light carrot cake from Cook's Illustrated, halving vegetable oil and whipping eggs. I also replaced granulated sugar with coconut sugar and quartered the amount. Yes, just 1/4 cup of coconut sugar. I thought carrots and fresh apples, with which I swapped crushed pineapple, would bring natural sweetness to the cake. On the other hand I kept shredded coconut and walnuts in the ingredients list. They were fine.

I cut the cake into two and sliced one of them into layers.

I wondered who decided carrot cakes to go with cream cheese frosting, but I think the combination is not a bad idea after all. So I followed the consensus while I made the frosting lighter than normal. I used low-fat cream cheese, skipped all butter and replaced all sugar with Splenda. I added some candied ginger into the cream cheese frosting, which the original recipe from King Arthur Flour called for.

I wasn't sure whether I liked the cake on the day I made, but the cake was nicely moist and mellow on the next day. J didn't like the cake on the first day, so didn't try to taste any on the second day. Ah, he missed the truth! Both the rest of the cake with cream cheese frosting and the whole second half cake became my breakfast and lunch for three days. Yes, I managed all.