The second most popular type of vegetable after potatoes, carrots are universally loved and used in most cuisines around the world to add flavor, texture, and color to savory and sweet dishes. There are over one hundred species of carrots, varying in size and color. While the most commonly seen and widely known carrot color is orange, carrot also comes in white, yellow, purple, and red. The average consumption of carrots in America is about 12 pounds a year, or one cup per week.

1. Delicious Easy Carrot Cake
Carrot cake is a classic dessert dish that is moist, dense, and soft with flecks of sweet
carrot bits. It is typically frosted with cheese icing or coated with powdered sugar. Some
like to add orange zest for a tangy bite. To make a simple carrot cake, heat the oven to
356 degrees F and grease or line a cake tin. Sift together flour, baking powder, sugar,
cinnamon, and bicarbonate of soda. In a bowl, beat eggs and citrus zest together with a
pinch of oil. Stir in grated carrots and fold the wet mixture to the flour mixture. Fold in
walnuts and pineapples if you want the enhanced flavor. Place the batter into the tin
and bake for an hour and twenty minutes or until a skewer pierced in the center of the
cake comes out clean.
To make the frosting, beat
butter and icing sugar together
until soft and then beat in the
cream cheese until all the
ingredients are well
incorporated. Place the mixture
in the fridge to chill and thicken
so that it becomes spreadable.
Spread icing in even layers all
over the cake and decorated as
you please. Some like to
garnish their carrot cake with toasted nuts like pecan or walnuts. Some like to add
applesauce instead of pineapple while others obliterate these extra ingredients all
together to bring out the true carrot flavor.
Applesauce and pineapple, however, can both be added to enhance the flavor and
moisture of the cake. You make need to bake the cake longer when working with these
added ingredients. Using carrots in sweet cakes have been done since the medieval
times. At that time, sweeteners were expensive and scarce, and substitutes like carrots
and sugar beets, which contain more sugar than other vegetables, were used to make
sweet desserts.