Carrot Cake is one of my favorites. My grandmother made one for my birthday for many years.
It really does have carrot in it. I can recall seeing my grandmother grating carrots for the cake.
I can’t taste the carrot. Theres no crunchy texture of carrot either. You could see the grated carrot in my grandmother’s cake. Commercial cakes and mixes often grind up the carrot and its not visible.
What purpose does it have in the cake?
I’m not a cooking expert, but my uninformed opinion as a lover of the cake is that it adds a certain moistness and richness to the cake, rather than carrot flavour.
Also, aren’t carrots fairly sweet as vegetables go?
Carrots are also very sweet. They add moisture and sweetness to a cake. In earlier times, when sugar was hard to come by or rationed, carrots were an easy way to reduce the amount needed of a more expensive ingredient. And, as it turns out, the end result is tasty enough to end up a dessert in its own right.
Flour too - you can use more carrot (by weight) than flour and still end up with something that is recognisably cake-like, and nice.
Carrot cake originated during medieval times when sweeteners were extremely scarce and carrots were used for their sweetness.
In this era we don’t generally think of carrots as something sweet, but in fact their sweetness is why they’re used as a treat for horses.
These days they’re also valued for their contribution to the texture and moistness as Malthus says, but the “original” reason was flavor (sweetness).
(nija’d)
I hadn’t considered the sweetness and moistness of carrots.
Ok, I can see why a cake recipe includes them. Mystery solved. thanks!
Now I want some carrot cake.
With cream cheese icing. Yum!
Sweet potatoes /“yams” can also be used, but it does give a different texture.
I think the question is less “why do we eat carrot cake” and more “why don’t we eat more things like carrot cake?”
I think we are going through a phase of rather unique rigidity about mixing overtly sweet tastes with other tastes (with a few exceptions, and of course the reality that almost everything these days come with a broad base of corn syrup.)
Historically we’ve been happy to eat sweet meat and sweet veggies, if we could get our hands on sugar. And certainly people around the world make sweets out of all kinds of things (look up Chinese meat floss). But for whatever reason we’ve defined “sweets” fairly narrowly.
I’d guess it’s just increased access to sugar, making purely sugar-on-sugar treats possible.
If it wasn’t made with carrot, it would be a different kind of cake, made from something else, and would thus have a different taste and texture.
It has carrot in it, because that is a crucial part of the recipe for carrot cake.
Although, come to that, even if you could make make a cake with the exact same taste and mouthfeel as carrot cake, but without using carrots, it still would not be carrot cake.
Next up: why do apple pies contain apple?
As to why the carrots aren’t soft… to make a cake you must apply heat. The heat cooks the carrots, which cook quickly since they are in thin shreds. Cooked carrots are soft. There’s your answer.
Also zucchini bread is pretty much the same thing (cake + raw vegetable shreds + flavored with spices) we just don’t usually frost it for whatever reason. 'bread" in that case is a bit of a misnomer as zucchini “bread” is just a type of cake. Pumpkin bread (made with the cooked pulp) is of the same species and is also quite popular in loaf or muffin form.
In all cases, the vegetable shreds or pulp hold onto moistness. Zucchini brownies are actually amazing.
I was told that the modern resurgence of carrot cake arose from the sugar rationing in Britain during and after WWII. Carrot isn’t as sweet as sugar, of course, but contains starches that break down in cooking to get sweeter.
Nobody blinks about pouring sweet barbecue sauce or ketchup or hoisin sauce over meat. They just don’t tend to think of the primary flavor of those sauces as “sweet”, because as you say we don’t associate sweet flavors with meat even though Americans eat tons of that stuff every day.
There is a type of carrot cake made without the carrots. It is called Spice Cake and they taste very similar but not identical. I love carrot cake as well and I like spice cake too just not quite as much. I think the carrots serve more as a binder, texturizer and moistening agent rather than a sweetener because there is still plenty of sugar used in both carrot cake and spice cake that overwhelms more subtle sweeteners.
It is isn’t fair to insinuate that this is a dumb question by comparing it to apple pie. Apples are the primary ingredient in apple pie while carrots are only a supplementary ingredient in carrot cake. You can leave them out completely and end up with something not that much different. Leave the apples out altogether the next time you make apple pie and let us know how that turns out.
Market tip:
Duncan and Hines now offers a “premium” line of mixes (cake and brownie) under the name “Decadent”.
The Carrot, Chocolate and “California Walnut” (brownie) are to die for - the quality is the same as restaurant-grade.
These are too good for the canned “Frosting” now sold - get real butter, powdered sugar, etc.
Could this be a trademark lawsuit waiting to happen? 
In my experience most modern, commercial carrots are low °Bx, since they have not endured the low temperatures necessary to trigger sugar production.
But they used to be sweet.
Moved to Cafe Society.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
It tastes great, and carrots are one of those perishable things you always buy in much greater quantity than you will ever actually use. (Bread pudding is a thing as well, for the same reason.)
My mom tried to make “zucchini cake” and “squash pudding” happen, but sadly was unable to.
I regularly make zucchini muffins for the kids as a dessert. We also make brownies with beetroot, makes them moist with less oil. Don’t think they affect the flavour much though.