A cake with carrots (but probably not the one you're thinking of)

October 21, 2022 5:32 AM

I picked up a carrot cake muffin at our local coffee shop this morning expecting it to be, well, carrot cake. It is - but it isn't! It's more like cake with carrots, and it's freaking delicious. Do you have a proven recipe for this sort of thing?

When grabbing my latte at the local coffee shop this morning, I also picked up a carrot cake muffin. It was in a wrapper, and covered with cream cheese frosting, so I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary until I got it home.

What I was expecting: moist, dense, orangey-brown carrot cake like this.

What I got was almost a pancake in color and flavor, but with carrots and walnuts in the batter. It has the consistency of a normal muffin. It's absolutely delicious, and I don't have any pictures because I've already eaten it all.

A cursory Google search just gives me the carrot cake I was expecting, not this amazing cake-with-carrots situation. Hope me, Mefites! Do you have a tried and true cake-with-carrots recipe to share?

posted by okayokayigive to Food & Drink (10 answers total)

It seams like "morning glory" cake (if that helps your searches).
posted by glibhamdreck at 6:27 AM on October 21, 2022 [6 favorites]

It’s probably a morning glory muffin with cream cheese frosting, I’d look at morning glory muffin recipes and then adapt them until you’ve found your perfect recipe. Or you can go back to your local shop and ask for the recipe.
posted by Champagne Supernova at 10:05 AM on October 21, 2022

A morning glory muffin is basically a mashup of an apple cake and a carrot cake: batter with carrots, apples, pineapple, coconut, and nuts, with cinnamon and nutmeg to spice up the batter. I'm not sure that meets your description, frankly.
posted by suelac at 10:57 AM on October 21, 2022 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks all! Looking at pictures, it's not a morning glory muffin - that's still a little closer to what I think of as carrot cake.

This was almost like a funfetti cake, but with carrot flecks instead of funfetti sprinkles.
posted by okayokayigive at 11:00 AM on October 21, 2022

It looks like you can make muffins with a pancake batter. I wonder if that might get you close.
posted by BoscosMom at 12:33 PM on October 21, 2022

I would ask the coffee shop! It sounds delicious.
posted by Stephanie Duy at 12:50 PM on October 21, 2022 [3 favorites]

If you do find out, please share! It sounds amazing!
posted by stoneandstar at 10:16 PM on October 21, 2022

I mean, could it be just a plain muffin recipe with shredded carrot and walnuts added (instead of, say, blueberries)? Something like this, which I picked at random as to me they look like your description but with blueberries and no frosting?
posted by AnnaRat at 2:27 PM on October 23, 2022

Best answer: I tried googling for ‘carrot funfetti cake’ and got this recipe Which might be getting closer? Obviously it is a layer cake but the cake part itself maybe looks similar and the buttermilk batter may make a muffin more like pancake. I’d do butter, not shortening, simply as I’m not very familiar with baking with shortening but cannot say what that might do.
posted by AnnaRat at 12:58 AM on October 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: AnnaRat, I think that's it! Thank you!
posted by okayokayigive at 11:32 AM on October 24, 2022