Date-Carrot cake

Anecdote


Kavery Subbiah Ganapathy has a hat stand at home. She also serves home -made ginger wine with awesome cup cakes. She belongs to Kodagu popularly anglicised as Coorg. Like the people of her land, Kavery has a distinct ethnicity of her own. A practicing Buddhist, mother of two, and an ex-colleague turned long-time buddy of mine, Kavery loves baking. We have shared some real quality time pouring over baking books, trying recipes and sharing best practices.

Once Kavery sent us on a wild goose chase to find Keema Dosas in East End Hotel on a rainy night with no roof over our head.  She said, “as soon as your bus reaches Madikeri, you get down at the corner and first head to East End Hotel for the best keema dosas ever!” Ah, well! That was some night. She missed adding that these dosas are available only between 4 and 7pm and we were in Coorg in the peak of the wedding season. We spent the night in a ‘daak bangla”!
Yet, seventeen years later, am I glad that they dropped the moving to London plan.

Stuff that you must have:

2 eggs
1 cup of finely grated carrot
1 cup flour
¾ cup cooking oil
Half teaspoon cooking soda
Half teaspoon baking powder
Half teaspoon cinnamon powder
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
2 tablespoons finely chopped dates
2 tablespoons powdered cashew nuts
Half cup powdered sugar

What to do:

Mix the cashew powder, carrot and date. Let us call it mixture A. Separately mix the flour, baking powder and the cooking soda and pass this through a sieve. Add cinnamon powder to this. Let us call this mixture B.  Now separate eggs. Whip them separately. Once the egg white is kind of stiff, add the beaten yolk. Slowly add oil. Add the sugar and fold it in. Fold in the A mixture. Once folded, add B mixture. Preheat the oven at 200 degrees. Then bake at 150 degrees till the needle passes through unscathed.

How to serve:

This is not really a cake that you cut at a birthday. It is more of a dessert that you serve with some vanilla ice cream or some cream out of a jug. It is very tasty served cold. In fact, it tastes yummier the next day.

Trivia:

The reason why most of the carrots we buy today are orange dates from the 17th century, when the House of Orange decided that the orange carrot was a great emblem and symbolic of the struggle for Dutch independence – and it became the carrot of choice amongst Dutch breeders.
Also, the phallus-shaped carrot has been associated with sexual stimulation since ancient times and was used by early Middle Eastern royalty to aid seduction.