The key to a perfect carrot cake is simple:
Just follow the directions!
any years ago at my specialty food
store, one of my best bakers was
having trouble with the carrotcakes. They kept falling in the middle, which
indicated to me that the batter was too wet.
We talked through all the ingredients and how she
was measuring them and we couldn’t figure out
what was going wrong. In desperation I suggested
that I just sit with her and watch her bake to see if
I could spot the problem. It turned out that we were
grating the carrots differently: When I developed the
recipe, I had grated them by hand on a box grater,
but when my baker needed to make a dozen cakes,
she used a food processor because it was so much faster.
Surprisingly, that resulted in much wetter carrots
in the batter, and we just needed to add a few more
tablespoons of flour. Mystery solved!
Baking is an exact science. How you prep ingredientsand how you measure them can make the difference
between a perfect cake and a total disaster. When you’re
baking, you should follow the recipe carefully and
measure ingredients precisely, using liquid measuring
cups for wet ingredients and metal measuring cups for
dry so you can level off the top with a straight edge. If
the recipe calls for room temperature eggs, that means
they shouldn’t be even a bit chilly; they should be truly
at room temperature. If you follow instructions exactly,
I think you’ll find that all your baking will improve and
Good
102 FOOD NETWORK MAGAZINE ●APRIL 2020
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you'll never have a disaster again!
/x'X /;u..