Sourdough Carrot Cake
Delightfully moist carrot cake made using sourdough starter. It makes a gorgeous centrepiece for your next brunch or afternoon tea, as well as a stunning dessert. You can ferment the batter overnight or bake straight away depending on your timeline.
Equipment
- 2 Round Cake Pans (I've used 2 pans measuring 20 x 5 cm or 8 x 2")
- Offset Spatula (for icing)
Ingredients
Sourdough Carrot Cake
- 200 g All Purpose Flour
- 15 g Baking Soda
- 4 g Salt
- 2 tsp Cinnamon (5 g)
- ½ tsp Nutmeg
- 1 tsp Ginger (dried, ground)
- ½ tsp All Spice
- 120 g Milk (whole milk)
- 3 Eggs
- 250 g Brown Sugar
- 75 g Vegetable Oil
- 7 g Lemon Juice (can use white vinegar)
- 200 g Sourdough Starter (can be active or discard)
- 100 g Crushed Pineapple
- 250 g Carrot (shredded or grated on a box grater)
- 25 g Desiccated Coconut
- 50 g Pecans (roughly chopped)
Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting
- 250 g Cream Cheese (must be a block, not spreadable)
- 150 g Butter
- 5 g Vanilla Extract
- 480 g Powdered Sugar (icing sugar)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180C (350F) and prepare 2 round cake tins. Grease the cake tins with butter or spray with cooking oil.
- In a large mixing bowl, add the all purpose flour, baking soda, salt and spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and all spice). Stir well to combine and set aside.
- In another mixing bowl, combine the milk, eggs, brown sugar, vegetable oil, lemon juice and sourdough starter. Whisk well to combine and dissolve the sugar into all the other ingredients.
- Now to the wet ingredients, add the grated carrot, pineapple, coconut and pecans. Whisk well to ensure all of these add ins are well distributed through the wet ingredients.
- Now, pour the liquid ingredients onto the dry ingredients and stir together until the flour mixture is moistened and there are no big lumps or clumps of flour.
- Pour the sourdough carrot cake batter evenly between the two round cake tin and place gently into the oven for around 50 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the pans for around 10 minutes before inverting onto a wire rack to cool.
- When you're ready to frost the sourdough carrot cake, place all frosting ingredients into a food processor or stand mixer bowl and whip until smooth.
- Place one half of the cake onto a plate and spread a generous amount of icing on top before placing the second cake on top. Use additional icing to cover the top and sides of the cake.
Notes
Sourdough Starter - you can make this sourdough carrot cake with either active sourdough starter or sourdough discard. If you are going to bake the cake straight away, the I recommend using sourdough discard. If you are wanting to ferment the sourdough carrot cake overnight, active sourdough starter is a better choice.
All Purpose Flour - you can use whole wheat flour if you prefer, however it will give you a slightly less wet batter. If you are using whole wheat flour, increase the milk in your cake to 150g. Einkorn flour can also be used if you prefer.
Carrots - I grate my fresh carrots on a box grater. Try to hold the carrot 90 degrees to the box grater so you get shorter grates of carrot, rather than long shreds as these don't have a good texture in a cake. Avoid pre-shredded carrots as these are too dry and your sourdough carrot cake will lack moisture. Do not squeeze the moisture out of the grated carrots, you want this in the cake!
Vegetable Oil - you need to use oil in this cake, rather than butter, however I understand you might not want to use vegetable oil. You can swap out the vegetable oil for coconut oil, avocado oil, light olive oil or sunflower oil if you'd prefer.
Brown Sugar - this cake is sweetened with brown sugar, but it has less sugar than a traditional carrot cake because the vanilla cream cheese frosting has lots of sugar. You can substitute coconut sugar for the brown sugar if you prefer. Do not substitute white sugar as it will not give the depth of flavor or moisture that brown sugar does.
Baking Soda - this is also called bicarb or bicarbonate of soda. Please note that it is NOT baking powder.
Pecans - you can use walnuts if you prefer or leave the nuts out altogether. I love the crunch the nuts give this cake, but they are absolutely optional.
Crushed Pineapple - I just scoop the pineapple out of the tin, I do not drain it first. You can use unsweetened apple sauce instead of crushed pineapple if you prefer. Perfect if you've got some leftover from making this sourdough applesauce cake.
Warm Spices - I've added cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and all spice. If you love spices, you can double the amounts given in the recipe. I like my cake to appeal to all tastes so I keep them fairly tame.
Powdered Sugar - if you are outside of the US, you might know powdered sugar as icing sugar.
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