Ina Garten's Shredding Tip For The Absolute Best Carrot Cake

Aromatic with cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg, carrot cake is the king of fall-flavored bakes. But if you're homemade version is missing the mark when it comes to texture and crumb, you may want to listen up to Ina Garten's shredding tip for the absolute best carrot cake: Shred your carrots manually instead of grating them in a food processor.

While this tip may seem at odds with Garten's usual relaxed philosophy around cooking, where cutting corners is downright championed if done right (store-bought is fine, folks), there's a good reason for it. Outlined in her cook's note of her recipe for carrot cake with ginger mascarpone frosting, featured in the book "Barefoot Contessa Foolproof" and shared by Food Network, Garten says, "Grate the carrots by hand on a box grater; if you grate them in a food processor, the carrots will be too wet and the cake might fall." 

Granted that grating carrots by hand is labor intensive, however, it does gives you better control over the thickness of the shreds. Simply use the fine-bladed side of your box grater to create slender slivers or use the thicker side to make chunkier shreds, depending on how much texture you're after. A finer shred is easier to seamlessly combine into cake batter, guaranteeing that every bite is replete with tender morsels of sweet carrot. Distributing the carrot evenly throughout the batter also imbues the finished result with that moisture that's so characteristic of a moreish, comforting carrot cake.

The other benefit to grating your carrots by hand is that you can easily shred a small amount for half a batch of your standard recipe or a single-serve muffin. Indeed, it's not worth the effort of pulling the food processor out of the back of the cupboard to whizz up a solitary carrot; it's actually less of a hassle to do it by hand on occasion. Plus, there's something to be said for the mental health benefits of leisurely preparing all the fixings for a cake and doing things the old-fashioned way.

Carrots lend a natural sweetness and attractive flecked appearance to cakes, which is why housewives in the UK were encouraged to use them to sweeten their dishes during wartime when sugar was rationed. Nowadays, the shredded carrots are paired with sugar and sweet fruits, like crushed pineapple, to create carrot cakes with an open crumb that are moist and packed with complex flavor. 

Other ingredients to elevate carrot cake include apple sauce, brown butter, and coconut. You can even switch the carrots for root vegetables, like beets. In fact, you can use the juice from the beets as a natural food coloring in your cake frosting to whip up beautiful pale pink icing.