Carrot cake with sour cream

1. For the cream you need rich sour cream. I have it at 20%, but I still weigh it out and recommend doing this for almost any sour cream. To do this, a portion of sour cream is placed in gauze folded in three layers and hung, for example, simply on the handle of a deep pan.

2. While you are preparing the dough and baking the cakes, excess liquid will drain from the sour cream and it will become denser

3. When I prepare carrot cupcakes, I add walnuts in large pieces, and for cake layers, I advise you to chop them into a heterogeneous but small fraction.

4. For the dough, first stir and beat the eggs with vegetable oil and a pinch of salt. Take refined oil - odorless. Better than plain sunflower. There are recipes with olive oil, but why increase the price? Yes, and there may be a bitter aftertaste specific to olive oil.

5. Then beat the mixture with sugar. The recipe indicates up to 150 g, so 150 g is for a really very sweet option, in my case it’s usually 100 g, but then the cakes will also have a sweet impregnation.

6. Add flour with baking powder and cinnamon. Mix well and beat lightly.

7. Then stir in the chopped walnuts.

8. Carrots for the cake can either be finely grated by hand or chopped using kitchen appliances.

9. Mix the dough with the prepared carrots until evenly distributed.

10. You can bake the dough in one shape, for example round, and then cut it into the required number of cakes. I prefer to bake a large short cake in a 30x20cm pan lined with baking paper that does not need to be greased, and then divide it into 2 or 3 cakes. This is faster (bake and then cool) - about 20 minutes at 180 degrees is enough, but the cake will turn out rectangular.

11. Please note that the baking time depends on the properties of your oven, so control the process and check the readiness with a wooden toothpick.

12. The finished carrot cake needs to be cooled and cut into 2-3 pieces. If desired, align them, giving them the same even rectangular shape if the rounded edges are confusing and you do not plan to completely coat the cake on all sides.

13. There is an opinion that you can skip the impregnation... But still, this is a cake, not a cupcake, so try the option with impregnation. To prepare the sweet impregnation, you need to bring water and sugar to a boil, cook for three minutes, then remove from heat and pour in cognac or rum (or use essence or flavoring). When the impregnation becomes not hot, but warm, then dissolve honey in it.

14. In the photo there is weighed sour cream, it is dense, and the cream from this will hold its shape well.

15. Add powdered sugar, mix and beat a little.

16. All that remains is to soak the carrot cakes, coat them with cream and assemble the cake. You can soak it in different ways:

Drizzle the surface of the cakes one teaspoon at a time.

Dipping the cake into the soaked bowl.

17. I like to dip. To do this, the impregnation must be divided by the amount of cakes, i.e. if I have three cakes, then each will be dipped in a third of the impregnation.

18. The cream is divided into two parts, because Only the inside of the cake will be coated, i.e. layers between three cake layers.

19. For simple decoration, I somehow cut out three stylized carrots from paper using powdered sugar. They need to be placed on the surface of the cake and sprinkled with powdered sugar; it is convenient to do this through a strainer.

20. Then carefully, for example, by picking up the edge of the paper with a toothpick, remove the “carrots”.

21. It is advisable to let the cake soak, and most importantly, let the sour cream set well in the refrigerator.

22. Carrot cake with sour cream is ready. Enjoy your tea and good health!