Healthy Carrot Cake

I have been juicing a lot of fruits and vegetables recently..

And one of my favourite vegetable is carrot. Carrots turns all juices into a nice bright orange, tastes super sweet (use only large carrots to get the sweet taste, not baby ones).

With all the pulp I got from juicing carrots, I decided to bake a carrot cake.

I went online to search for a recipe and finally decided on this one at joyofbaking.com, partly because of the picture and partly because I have all the ingredients required at home.

I decided to really go out of the way for this cake, so I "grated" my carrots in 3 different ways, to get different textures:
1) I juiced 1 carrots, drank the juice and set aside the pulp for the cake
2) Grated another carrot
3) Shredded the last one for this cake

Remembering my previous experiences with cake recipes online (all too sweet), I also adjusted the recipe a little.

Ingredients
2 cups (280 grams) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
4 large eggs
1 cup (240 ml) vegetable oil (I used a mix of canola and sunflower oil)
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup (250 grams) brown sugar (Original recipe calls for 300g of white sugar)

What I did
1. In a medium bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together well
2. Beat egg for 1 minute
3. Add sugar and beat for 3-4 minutes
4. Add oil in a steady stream and beat as I add the oil
5. Add in vanilla extract
6. Fold carrots and flour into egg mixture (Note: fold, not beat)

Preheat oven to 180 deg C. Bake in a 23cm diameter round tin for more than 60 minutes. I think if you divide the mixture into 2 and bake in 2 tins as per the original recipe, it'd take less time - 30 to 40 minutes.

A nice cinnamon aroma starts floating around the house when the cake starts getting cooked..

The cake is definitely moist enough.. I would definitely try it with the frosting next time. (Joy of Baking also gave the recipe for a cream cheese frosting. I realised I didn't have any confectionary sugar at home... so made the healthy version today.. :))