Last month, I hosted a dinner at my house and wanted to bake a carrot cake, so I pulled out one of my favorite vintage cookbooks, Favorite Recipes of America: Desserts. This cookbook was published in 1968, and as far as I’m aware it’s not in print any more, but there are several used copies available on Amazon, which is cool! I love this cookbook and refer to its carrot cake recipe any time I make one. This cookbook compiled recipes from people all over the country, and this tasty recipe was submitted by Sharon A. Longaker, who won a blue ribbon at the Kentucky State Fair for her efforts. Because I wanted to make this recipe sugar free, I made a few adaptations to it, including the fact that I baked it as cupcakes rather than using a tube pan. This way, I was able to frost some cupcakes and leave the others plain.
- 1½ cups vegetable oil
- ¾ cup Truvia Baking Blend
- 4 egg yolks
- 4 egg whites
- 5 TBSP hot water
- 2½ cups flour
- 1½ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp ground cloves
- 1 tsp nutmeg
- 1½ cups grated raw carrot
- 1 cup chopped walnuts
- In a large bowl, cream oil and sugar together. Add egg yolks to the mixture one at a time, followed by the hot water. Add flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, mixing thoroughly. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form, then fold into the cake batter.
- Place cupcake liners into two trays and preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Spoon batter into liners - an ice cream scoop works well for this - and fill liners with batter. Depending on the size desired, you can fill each cupcake liner ¼ to ⅔ of the way full. My first batch was slightly larger than the second, so my total yield was 23 cupcakes.
- Bake cupcakes until a toothpick tests clean in the center. I forgot to write down the time I took mine out at, but it was maybe 45 minutes - the original recipe calls for 60-70 minutes when baked in a 9" tube pan. I also goofed and baked them at 250 degrees for the first 20 minutes because I read the dial wrong! Bottom line, this recipe is resilient, so adapt it to suit your needs!
Since this is a stout cake, I left half of the cupcakes plain so that they could be enjoyed almost like a muffin. Eaten plain, these cupcakes should be suitable for those with diabetes. This recipe was created 40 years before Truvia Baking Blend was invented, and it worked great – so it’s easy to adapt any classic recipe to work with Truvia. Try toasting one of of these cupcakes with butter – mmmm!
I used a traditional cream cheese frosting on the other half, for those who can consume sugar. The frosting recipe for this cake in the original cookbook calls for 3/4 of a margarine stick, 4oz cream cheese, 2 teaspoons of vanilla and 1 box of powdered sugar. Since my margarine was in a tub rather than stick – not to mention my powdered sugar being in a large bag rather than the standard small box this recipe called for – I just improvised and “Eyeballed it”, especially since I didn’t need as much frosting with only half the batch getting any. I used all the same ingredients in proportions that “Looked about right”, and it worked out great!
Do you use vintage cookbooks? Have you ever adapted one of the recipes?