Granny's Carrot Raisin Cake

Cake server and sugar spoon "Let Them Eat Cake"
by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen

This is one of my favourite cakes. It is wonderfully moist inside and it has rich (but not too rich) flavour because of the carrots, orange peels, raisins and the powdered ginger! There are quite a few Finnish baking recipes that include carrots or some other root vegetable.

Carrots are wonderful in cakes. They bring a little texture in it but they also bring that much needed moistness which many cakes, in my opinion, does not have.

Cakes are also a very good reason to open the box of a beautiful cake server.  I fell in love with it in a minute I saw it and I bough three. So in time all my children will get  the cake server as well as sugar spoons, cake forks and such.Let Them Eat Cake by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen is simply so beautiful that I ended up getting most pieces for each of my three children.

The plates and the sugar bowl I have found from the flea market some years ago and the table runner used to belong to my grandmother.

150g ( 0.331 lb) butter
170 grams (0.375) sugar

2 eggs

260 grams (0.573 lb) all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp vanilla sugar

1 tsp powdered ginger 

130 grams  (0.287 lb) raisins

70 grams (0.154 lb) candied orange peel

2-3 grated carrots

100 grams  (0.220 lb) sour milk

1. Whip the soft butter and sugar into foam.
2. Add the eggs one by one and mix well.
3. Mix all the dry ingredients and the grated carrot and sour milk.
4. Whip just so that you get all mixed.
5. Pour the batter into a buttered and floured cake tin.
6. Bake in the 175°C (350°F)for about 60-70 minutes. (A bit more if your carrots are really juicy.)  Enjoy!

Cake server and sugar spoon "Let Them Eat Cake"
by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen

Sissi's Date Cake - Sissin Taatelikakku

Christmas is my favourite time of the year so when my mom baked this cake during the summer months, in the middle of the heat wave,  it made me wish Christmas would already be here. And in a way it is, the scent in the house is wonderful and it is tempting me to listen to some Christmas songs...well, maybe next month...

This is my mother's recipe and she bakes this cake to us every Christmas and sometimes in other occasions too but during those cold wintry months around Christmas time this is the most wonderful scent in the house.

The cake preserves really well so this is usually made a couple of weeks before we are planing to eat it and it's best to store the cake in the fridge or in the cellar. As long as you store it in the cool place, wrapped in a plastic,  it will last easily a month or even more. The flavor gets better and better when the cake is stored this way and on Christmas it will be full of that flavor that is one of the building blocks of the childhood Christmas.

Many people in Finland make date cakes during the Christmas time and there are just as many recipes as there are bakers. This one is a bit different to many others I have tasted. My mother's cake has darker colour and more intense flavour and no cream, milk or coffee is used. I like this one more than the others since this is the cake which in  you can really taste the dates. There is no need to mix any other flavour in it. Cream and coffee will only take a crown away from the dates.

250g (8.819 oz) dried dates

200 grams (7.055 oz) water

175 grams (6.173 oz) sugar

200 grams (7.055 oz) butter

2 eggs

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

2 tsp vanilla sugar

230 grams (8.113 oz) all purpose flour

1. Add the dates, water, sugar and butter into a pot. Boil them as long as it needs to get dates break.

2. Let the mix cool down and prepare the bundt cake pan in the meanwhile. Butter it well and dust with dark cocoa powder or a mix of all-purpose four and cocoa powder.

3. Whip the eggs into the mixture, one at the time.

4. Mix the dry ingredients together and then add them to the batter. Mix as little as possible.

5. Bake about 55-60 minutes in the center of the oven in 175°C (350°F).