Carrots? Check.

Nuts? Check.

Healthy? Not so much, but when there’s healthy protein and veggies in a cake, it’s kinda hard not to pretend it’s health — or at least rationalize that if you weren’t eating this, then you’d be eating some kind of Death By Chocolate Chocolate cake, and that’d kill you, so this is definitely healthier and therefore better, so why not have a second slice, hmm?

I have to say that I’ve always hated carrot cake. It’s the raisins, you see — I absolutely hate dried fruit, and raisins are up there with prunes in the “Most Evil Dried Fruit from a Delicious Fruit Ever” category. In fact, in my mind, they duke it out regularly, vying for this most prestigious title, while somewhere else in the world, okra realizes that no one else is competing against it for “Most Evil Vegetable Ever!” this year. Or any year. Ever.

I digress.

The directions are for a cake — either a round layer or a rectangular sheet cake. I’ve also had success many times in the past making these into delicious little cupcakes that the ladies at my office adore. Just line a cupcake/muffin tin with 12 liners, fill till 3/4 full, then bake for about 20-25 minutes.

And that, kids, is why I love Isa’s recipes — they’re substitute-friendly and nearly idiot-proof.

Ginger-Macadamia-Coconut-Carrot cake

• 2 1/3 c. flour
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 c pinapple juice
• 1/2 c canola oil
• 3/4 c sugar
• 1/2 c pure maple syrup
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 c macadamia nuts (I substituted walnuts because they’re WAY cheaper and still taste good.)
• 1/4 crystallized ginger, chopped.
• 1 c. unsweetened coconut
• 2 c. carrots, grated.

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Have ready two 8″ round springform cake pans, lightly greased. (I used a 9×13 pan and made a single layer cake, because I felt a bit lazy.)
2. In a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices.
3. In a separate large mixing bowl, mix together the pineapple, oil, sugar, maple syrup, and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients to the wet in batches, and combine well with a hand mixer or strong fork. Fold in the nuts, ginger, coconut, and carrots.
4. Divide the batter evenly between the two round cake pans, or spread in the retangular pan, and bake for 40-45 minutes. Let cool in pans. Remove from pans and put a layer of coconut icing between the layers and another layer of icing on top; I like to leave the sides free of frosting because it looks pretty.

(Ed. Note: if you’re like me and something of a sugar junkie, I strongly recommend making a double batch of the icing and doing the sides with what’s leftover after you glop it on really thick to the top and middle. Trust me, you’ll want all that sugar!)

Coconut Frosting:
• 1/4 c. non-hydrogenated margarine at room temperature.
• 1/4 c coconut milk (Ed. note: if you’re a little short, soy works fine but doesn’t taste as coconutty.)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 c confectioner’s sugar, sifted.
• 1 c. unsweetened coconut.

1. Cream margarine until light and fluffy.
2. Add the coconut milk and vanilla and combine.
3. Add the sifted confectioner’s sugar and mix until smooth (use an electric mixer; otherwise it might take a good 5 minutes to mix.)
4. Add the unsweetened coconut and combine. Refrigerate until ready to use (Ed. note: trying to frost the cake while it’s still warm is a REALLY bad idea. Really.)

One of the things I miss about England is Sunday dinner. My mother-in-law, though she doesn’t exactly enjoy cooking, is quite the chef on Sunday nights. With the sort of talent and tricks usually reserved for illusionists, she can roast a whole chicken, cook up roasted potatoes, whisk up some gravy, and put all of this plus various vegetables and yorkshire puddings on the table at the same time–everything set up still warm and ready to go.

Of course, it helps that much of the dinner comes from the freezer section of the supermarket.

My favorite part, of course, is the yorkshire puddings. If you’ve not been England, then you probably haven’t sampled the delicious, light and fluffy, crusty but savory beauty that is a Yorkshire pudding. For some reason, while what is referred to as “fish and chips” (read: fish sticks and french fries) is popular in almost any and every “English Pub” in the US, and you can find plenty of British food specialty shops throughout the country, very few places have actually attempted to import the Yorkshire pudding.

I’m not quite sure why. The ones my mother-in-law buys come in little tins–you keep them in the freezer until Sunday dinner (or whenever, if you’re not a traditionalist) and then throw the puddings, tins and all, onto a baking sheet and pop them in the oven. Thirty minutes or so later, they’ve puffed up beautifully and ready to eat.

Making them from scratch, my only option in a world without freezer-case puddings, was a daunting task. There was, first of all, no guarentee that what came out of my oven would be even close to the puddings David had grown up with, and I’ve never had particularly good luck with puffy things. Much like Marge Simpson, my chocolate souffles tend to end up being brownies; a combination of downstairs neighbors who can’t quietly close doors or take their shoes off while walking and a cat who likes to run head-first into things tends to limit my ability to bake anything that is fragile. But, I was doing a traditional Sunday dinner for David, including a roasted chicken (Tandoori-style…what can be more English than co-opting Indian cooking?) and roast potaotes from Jamie Oliver’s Sainsbury’s ads. A Sunday dinner without Yorkshire puds would be like Thanksgiving without stuffing.

My biggest concern, flavor and texture wise, was the lack of lard or drippings. I was roasting the chicken at 350 F until the last thirty minutes, when I was going to crank up the temperature to brown it off and throw in the yorkshire puddings to cook at the same time–I needed something that was going to be able to take the heat (so to speak) but wouldn’t impart any weird flavors or textures to the puddings themselves. After a quick check on the internet, I came across a discussion of different, healthier, non-animal fats from The Great American Detox Diet: 8 Weeks to Weight Loss and Well-Being by Alex Jamieson (more commonly known as Morgan Spurlock’s vegan fiancee) and discovered that coconut oil, once considered one of those horrible, fatty tropical oils, has an incredibly high smoking point and doesn’t kill you instantly, as we were led to believe in the 80s.

Of course, once those white globules melted and started smoking, I had different worries in mind, mainly how the puddings would turn out as they sank into the center of the little pools of oil in my muffin tin.

As you can see, however, those worries were unfounded, and David didn’t notice any difference in taste between these and the ones he grew up with. Of course, he hasn’t had an English Sunday dinner in more than a year, so he may have forgotten.

English Yorkshire Puddings

Ingredients

• 2 Eggs
• 1 c. all-purpose flour
• 1/2 c. milk
• 1/2 c. water
• Salt & Pepper
• 2 tbsp Lard or Drippings or cooking oil (see note)

Directions

1. Pre-Heat the oven to 425 F .
2. Crack open the eggs into a cup and mix well. (See notes)
3. Add the milk and water together in a separate bowl.
4. Sift the flour, salt, and pepper together in a large mixing bowl.
5. Pour in the eggs and stir.
6. Gradually pour in the milk and water, wisking constantly, until no lumps are visible.
7. Allow to rest for half an hour.
8. Slip the Lard or Dripping into the wells of a popover pan (large ramekins or a muffin tin will substitute) and place the empty pan in the oven; heat until visible smoking.
9. Quickly, but carefully, remove the pan from the oven. Pour in the batter. Immediately, return pan to the oven and bake for around half an hour until the batter is puffed up, golden brown and crispy. Serve warm.

Yorkshire Pudding – Notes

1. The importance of the oil or fat is that it must have a high smoking point to work. Most recipes on the internet say to use lard or drippings, but if you want to be a bit healthier, I found a nice 1-2 tsp of coconut oil works beautifully. Do NOT use something that smokes easily, such as olive oil.
2. You can cutdown on the prep work by throwing all of the ingredients into a KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer and letting it rip. Preheat the oven (step one), mix the ingredients together in the mixer until well combined without lumps (I used the wisk attachment,) and then skip to step 7.