George's Marvellous Carrot Cake

When I'm not taking the view that anything can be improved by adding chocolate chip cookie dough or layers of cheesecake, I'm always looking for the best possible version of a basic recipe. You know what I mean? The sort you try, and you just know it's the best; you just know that this is Exactly What It Should Taste Like. Chocolate chip cookies, for example. I don't even want to go into the amount of people who've searched for that ultimate recipe (and even when I think we've found it - yes I did make the NY Times cookies, and yes, just, yes - I continue to search for one that doesn't take 36 hours and £10 worth of ingredients).

Personally, I'm always on the lookout for carrot cake. I save recipes, I compare recipes, I try recipes; I am consistently underwhelmed by recipes. I tear up recipes and stamp on the pieces. I shout things about carrot cake that I will not repeat. I know, deep in my heart, that carrot cake is just so much better than anything I've tried so far.

And I'd almost given up. I'd almost resigned myself to mediocre carrot cake - I'd half told myself that maybe this was just the way carrot cake was; maybe the idea I had in my head was but a dim and distant dream. I'd told myself off a few times for using phrases like 'dim and distant dream' in relation to cake, and so on.

I had nothing to lose, but some carrots to use up. So I pooled my remaining recipes, taking bits from each, changing a couple of measurements, regulating things, casting unnecessary nuts and extraneous ingredients aside.

Oh, it could have been a disaster. I could have been writing this with tear tracks down my orange-tinged cheeks (too many carrots). It would have been the end, my friends. I would have turned away from vegetable-based cake for life, forced to join the real world - the practical, vanilla sponge world. No longer would I write like an eighteenth century novelist chronicling my cake escapades! No more over-dramatics over unsatisfactory baked goods! No more exclamation marks!I made this cake a few weeks ago and froze it, without trying it. And then I got it out the other day; left it overnight. Frosted it in the morning, and ate it in the afternoon. It looked so ordinary - no secret ingredient or unusual method...

But this cake? Was The One. Understated and ridiculously damp and moist, this was the carrot cake I had seek...ed. seeken sought wanted. What makes this cake different from any other cake, I've no clue (I do suspect it benefited from being left overnight) and much in the manner of George's Marvellous Medicine, I'm not sure I could reproduce it, but this is The Recipe.

Do with it what you will, my friends.

I've Actually Found The Best Carrot Cake Recipe In The World
Adapted from four separate sources, I can't really credit anyone with this (it uses two blogs, a bit of Dorie Greenspan, and an old recipe from Gourmet), so it looks like I get dibs on it. I've never been prouder to own anything in my life. Except maybe my Nikon.

This only makes a 7" (double layer) cake so you can double it and make a 9" one as most of the original recipes did. Obviously, I'm cooking on a smaller scale now.

140g (1 c.) flour
180g (1c.) caster sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 tsp each allspice, nutmeg
2 eggs
1 dash salt
200ml oil (EDIT: This should be 1/2c. in my half quantity recipe, but when I copied it out to have to hand in the kitchen, I halved all quantities except the oil X__X. Solves the mystery of why it was so moist, haha. Rather than use a whole cup (240ml) I suggest you try about 200ml and see how it goes).
2 cups carrots, grated by hand (sorry, I don't know this in grams! Should have a volume of 500ml)

1. Beat sugar and oil. Add carrots. Add eggs, one at a time. Sift together flour, baking powder and soda, cinnamon, and salt. Add all together. Bake in 2 7" greased pans at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes. Frost cake with cream cheese frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting
225g cream cheese
60g butter
250-300g (2 c.) confectioners sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Cream together butter and cream cheese. Beat in sugar and vanilla. Frost cake when cooled.