Making an Anarcake Part 2: Baking Time!
Adaptations
During the process of baking, my original ideas of how to make this cake changed in a few ways. First, I realized immediately after working with coconut oil that because of how easily it melts, trying to use it to make a frosting would be very difficult, and trying to keep it as a solid frosting without keeping it in the fridge would also be difficult. As such, I decided to use Trader Joe’s vegan butter instead.
I think for the sake of making a good cake, this was probably the right call—coconut oil definitely tastes like coconut, and that does not work that well with carrot cake which is inextricably tied to cream cheese frosting. Based on that, I also decided not to buy an entire container of coconut oil just to use so little of it, and used some olive oil I already had in the pantry instead. Next, I replaced the almond milk with coconut milk to avoid any nut allergies. Also, I scaled down the original recipe to fit in two 4-inch pans instead of two 8-inch pans, because I don’t want to have a ton of cake in the house. With that, here’s the actual final recipe!
Recipe
Ingredients
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup applesauce
1/3 cup coconut milk
1 1/2 cups grated carrots (about 3 large carrots)
2 package Trader Joe’s vegan butter (500 grams total)
4 cups powdered sugar
Directions
Prep tins by greasing with oil, and line with parchment. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl
Pour in olive oil, applesauce, and almond milk, and mix to combine
Fold in shredded carrots
Pour into prepared pans, then bake for 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
In another bowl cream together vegan butter and sugar until smooth and fluffy. Icing should be stiff, but if it’s unworkable, add a teaspoon of coconut milk to soften it.
Let cake layers cool before frosting.
Baking Notes
If I’m being honest, I did not particularly like the way this cake turned out. I enjoyed the icing, but the cake itself was not the best in terms of texture, which I honestly expected—working with vegetable fats and no eggs has never worked well for me. I enjoyed being able to really taste carrots, but I also don’t love carrots that much in the first place, so I’m kind of questioning some of my life choices now.
In other respects, this project was interesting! 4th Street Co-Op is a very different shopping experience than my usual Trader Joe’s—for one, its dry goods are sold in bulk, and there’s also a limited amount of people allowed in the store at once. Additionally, the store is also open only at specific hours, and only in the afternoon, while the prices of goods are significantly higher. For example, a five-pound bag of all-purpose flour at Trader Joe’s costs around $3, while at the Co-Op, it would cost around $9. Both of these factors mean that it’s relatively impractical for me to buy all of my food from this store.
The same goes for the farmer’s market—Union Square Greenmarket is the largest one in the city and is open the most, but even then, it’s only open four out of seven days a week, and prices are consistently higher as well. Overall, it seems that being a more ethical consumer costs more money, which makes sense—being able to profit off of a company’s exploitation of workers would naturally decrease prices.
Will I continue going to these stores for my routine grocery shopping? Probably not, and not just because I’m not going to be near them anymore in a matter of days. Since I currently don’t have my own source of income it’s just not very feasible. However, in the future when I’m able to make money, I will probably buy more from farmer’s markets, not just because of ethical reasons, but also because the quality of such products is generally better, just like Kropotkin mentioned a century ago.
All in all, a good experience!
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