carrots | A little Swiss, a little Canadian

I hope you all had a happy Easter! And we certainly can not complain about the longer weekend;) Here in Canada our kids do not have spring vacation like my nephew and niece have in Switzerland. So we take the extra two days off of course! Also the weather was pretty nice and warm on Easter Sunday.

We have been making a few treats, like these carrot cookies!

I will definitely make these again, these cookies were so soft and just yummy!! I used coconut sugar for sweetening. I might be posting the recipe another time.

This year I colored our eggs traditionally with onion peels.

But the grand dessert was our carrot cake. Now a European carrot cake is a bit different than a North American carrot cake. So once in a while I like to make it the way I grew up eating it. Also in Switzerland you decorate a carrot cake with Marzipan carrots and I made some “grass” also using Marzipan. Now here in Canada, because you can not buy the finished product, you will have to make your own “carrots” using plain Marzipan and food coloring. I was lucky that my mom brought those when she was visiting:) This is not the original recipe I have in my 1982 Betty Bossi book: Kuchen, Cakes & Torten, rather a bit of a lighter version with less butter and flour. I admit, I did use coconut sugar, which turned out beautiful. We really, really liked it! And it is a keeper all year long! Make it a day or two in advance, it will taste even better:)

Swiss Carrot Cake

240 g almonds, ground
300 g carrots, shredded
90 g butter, unsalted, melted
6 eggs, egg whites separated
230 g sugar
1 organic lemon, zest
dash salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp clove
60 g unbleached flour

-Preheat oven to 350F/180C. Line the bottom of a 8-inch round baking pan with parchment paper. Grease and flour the sides.

-Cream together 100 g sugar and egg yolks. Add lemon zest, salt, cinnamon and clove. Mix in carrots, flour and nuts.

-In a separate bowl, whisk egg whites until stiff. Slowly add 130 g sugar then whisk again until shiny.

-Add 1/3 of the egg whites to the first batter and carefully mix under. Then add the rest. Mix in melted butter just until combined.

-Fill in prepared baking pan and bake for about 45-50 min, or until tester inserted comes out clean. Let cool completely.

Decoration:

almond shavings (around 50g)
apricot jelly, or jam warmed and then strained through a sieve. Spread around cake then sprinkle the almond shavings on.
Marzipan carrots
green Marzipan (around 200g), roll out, in between plastic wrap, to cover the top. Then make some “grass”.
or plain marzipan and orange and green food coloring and some pistachios for the “carrot top”.
using a garlic press to make the “grass”
Some chocolate eggs

-You can also simply dust the cake with icing sugar.

If you never had a European style carrot cake you might want to give this a try;) just saying…!!

Enjoy!

Ursula

These bars were the snacks that I packed so far for my kids lunches this week. Or I was hoping it would be enough until Friday but then my hubby discovered them, and so they are all gone…I am glad they all liked it that much, it just means I have to whip up something else now. I like to make healthier snacks for my kids to bring to school, like Granola Bars or Muffins, because homemade you can really control what goes in it.I guess I just have to make a larger batch, my hubby is not the only one that likes a little healthy snack;)