Pretty Purple Carrot Cake

Happy Spring Everybody!

The sun already feels warmer, birds are singing, blossoms are blooming and tendrils of scented air waft enticingly up sinuses rapidly stuffing them with seasonally induced hayfever



Have you ever noticed how so much of taste is linked to smell?

Apparently only about 20% of your taste experience comes from the tongue, and the other 80% comes from the scent.
This was discovered by Linda Buck and Richard Axel, the winners of the Novel Prize in Medicine 2004,  for their “discoveries of odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system”.

They put forward a hypothesis based on the fact that if the aroma of foods is so important for the way we perceive them, then if the major volatile molecules of two foods are the same, they might taste (and smell) nice when eaten together.

This idea has been enthusiastically embraced by many of the gastronomic magicians of our time, including Heston Blumenthal, who love to perplex and amaze our tastebuds while screwing with our minds!

I love to put together fun and interesting flavour combinations, and even have this great resource book The Flavour Thesaurus- Pairings, recipes and ideas for the creative cook, by Niki Segit, to help me come up with some awesome ideas and combinations indeed.
Some odd sounding pairings from the book include: Olive and white chocolate, Goat cheese and coffee, Oyster and nutmeg and Caviar and banana. These are ones I haven't tried yet, but they do sound bizarre, don't they?


Anyway one of the taste combinations that I found intriguing was Carrot and Violet (apparently Ionone is the main pairing molecule here), and I figured it would be in keeping with my recent floral theme, and a fitting celebration of the first week of Spring here in the Southern Hemisphere.



Now of course, if you are going to play around tricking two senses, you really might as well add a third, so I decided to use Purple carrots as they are both carrots and a violent violet hue. Taste, Smell and Sight- cool, huh?

Now please don't worry if you don't have either purple carrots or violet flavouring. This recipe is just as nice with orange ones and some vanilla extract or perhaps some lemon zest instead. I don't want you to miss out just because you aren't as weirdly wired as I am.

I have a lovely lot of violets, violas and pansies blooming at the moment, and have them scattered around the house in float bowls to bring a bit of the garden in. The cat however, thinks I have left out lovely little puddles for her quaffing pleasure. How nice to have floral flavoured punch on tap!

Pretty Purple Carrot Cake

5 Eggs
1 1/2 cups Castor Sugar
2 cups grated Carrots
1 cup Almond Meal
1 cup Pistachio Meal (or you could just use more almond meal)
1/2 cup gluten free Flour
2 Tb Violet Syrup (or 2 tsp vanilla extract, or 1 lemon zest)
1 tsp gf Baking Powder
pinch of Salt



Peel your carrots, I needed 3 nice big ones for the 2 cups
Aren't these pretty? The colour is nice and solid the whole way through. Last year I grew purple climbing beans, but as soon as I cooked them they sadly turned bright green. These carrots stay a gorgeous purple even after cooking

Grate the carrots next. I chose to grate them very finely to let as much colour leach out into the cake batter as possible

I ground the pistachios just in my food processor, it was very easy and only took about a minute. The smell of the freshly ground nuts was amazing!

Separate the eggs

Whip the egg whites until nice stiff peaks form, then set aside

Beat all the ingredients together except the eggwhites, until nice lightened and a bit fluffy
My mixer is very strong so it had no problem with that, otherwise leave out the carrots until the batter is well beaten then mix through

Stir in about a third of the egg whites to lighten the batter

Then carefully fold in the rest of the whites. Don't knock the air out of them, they make the mix light and fluffy and help it rise

Pour the batter into a well greased cake pan, then bake for about an hour at 180*C

Cool in the pan for about 10 minutes, then move to a rack to cool totally before icing

Violet Glaze

My lovely violets: syrup, candied flowers and fresh from the garden

Roughly crush up the candied violets by bashing them in a mortar and pestle, or in a bag with a rolling pin

To ice the cake I made a glaze with a cup of pure icing sugar mixed with enough syrup to make a runny mix to pour over the top, then sprinkled it with crushed candied violets while it was still wet.
Do this while the cake is still on the rack so it dribbles over the edge and looks pretty. Catch any excess drips on a plate underneath. Don't forget the plate though, or it will be a sticky mess!

See the gorgeous purple flecks through the cake?

Such a lovely cake, the flavours worked together beautifully. The violet matched so very well and didn't over power the carrot-iness at all.

A perfect tribute to the taste and scent of Spring

So Dear Readers, what do you think of the purple carrots, and what is the weirdest flavour combination you've ever tried?











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Slice Of Heaven

In the hope of encouraging an early Spring, I'm sticking with my botanical theme today and creating light-as-air Angel Food Cakes flavoured with Jasmine.

The air outside my window is full of the scent of Daphne at the moment, and in a few weeks it will be heavy with the smell of blossoms competing with fresh cut lawn on the weekends. It will be a couple of months until my jasmine blooms, but if I close my eyes and eat one of these little cakes, I can imagine myself away from frost and freak snow showers and basking in the sunlight of Spring.

I collect weird and wonderful flavour bases, I've recently acquired this lovely Monin syrup in some great flavours like violet, jasmine and cucumber, and I found this great concentrate at an Indian Supermarket. Perfect for my baking needs

Angel Food Cake isn't one I've ever actually tried to make before, or one I've actually ever eaten before, but the name is so lovely and the idea of a fat free-gluten free-dairy free cake was just too hard to pass up, I would really be doing us all a favour by taste testing this recipe- wouldn't I? I thought so, so I will!

I did learn some lessons along the way that will make my next attempt at heavenly snacking a bit easier: don't use fancy-pantsy cake tins just because they look cute, it's the same with shoes- sometimes function over form actually is important; don't forget the flavouring ingredient until after you have mixed the cakes- it's not as easy to re mix without losing air bubbliness as you might think; don't infuse stain inducing berries on your favourite blouse just because you think it would make a pretty backdrop for your photo and you don't have anything else those colours to use.

Words of wisdom People


The recipe for today actually comes from a ratio

I got this recipe from Michael Ruhlman's aptly named cookbook- Ratio. 'The simple codes behind the craft of everyday cooking' 
It breaks down a variety of recipes into their simplest form, a ratio that works every time if you just follow a few simple rules. It's so handy, and much easier to remember than a full recipe when you're in a hurry and don't have time to muck about finding a full recipe.

Angel Food Cake= 3 parts egg white: 3 parts sugar: 1 part flour (in this case, gluten free of course)

The only other ingredients needed are a dash of flavouring essence, a pinch of salt and a few drops of lemon juice to help stabilise the whites when beating. Easy Peasy

Instead of whole eggs today I used just egg whites, available at Woolies etc. in the refrigerated section. Much handier for these type of recipes that don't need the yolks

Divide the sugar in half, then mix one half into the flour and mix together

Now the tricky bit.... beat the egg whites on medium then add the salt, lemon juice and flavour essence. Once the mixture is opaque, start to drizzle in the half measure of sugar

According to Ruhlman, 'the egg white and sugar mixture should not be whipped feverishly; it should be whipped on medium to medium-high in order to prevent over mixing. If it's whipped to hard and becomes to stiff, it won't rise properly. There's a point in the mixing when it's white and fluffy but still pourable, and then a few moments later it's just stiff enough that it won't quite pour but neither is it so stiff that it holds a stiff peak'
Got all that?

Sift the rest of the sugar and the flour over the egg whites, then gently fold it in

Pour into your un-greased pan. The traditional pan is a tall straight sided tin with a central core that leaves a hole in the middle of the cake. The centre tube means the batter can raise from the middle as well as the sides and allows a larger surrounding edge for the cake to stick to as it rises.

As I didn't have a proper Angel Food cake tin, and wanted individual sized ones anyway, I  used some pretty little heart shapes that were just to intricate with all the ridges on the sides. Next time I'll use my straight sided individual push-up tins with a removable base, or even cupcake pans, they should work much better

I baked these little lovelies for 20 minutes at 180*, or until a skewer comes out nice and clean when stuck in the middle of one of the cakies

After baking, the cake pan should be inverted while cooling to prevent the cake from falling in on itself, then left until completely cooled down so the sugar-protein network can completely set. The purpose built cake tins have little feet on the rims so that the cooked cake actually hangs from the base of the pan as it cools.

One of the little lovelies. Just stuck a little at the sides, but I promise you it will still taste good!

Angel Food Cakes are usually served with syrup and fruit, like berries or a coulis. I really tried to to come up with a fruit that I thought would compliment the jasmine flavour.... pear? nectarine? blackberry! I don't find blackberries as assertive as raspberries or even strawberries, but love their sweet earthiness and thought they would match up well.

So pretty and ready to fill:




















I macerated some frozen blackberries in the jasmine syrup while the cakes cooled, then filled up the centre of the hearts with the fruits while letting the juices dribble down and soak into the cakes- Yummo!

Such a nice cake indeed! A real cross between a meringue and sponge cake- so light and airy, not too sweet at all.
How can you resist this? Gluten free, dairy free, fat free.... Guilt free!!!

So Dear Readers, what is your favourite type of cake, and do you have any good tips for removing blackberry stains?
















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