The translation of recipes and ideas from German to English and English to German always makes for interesting reading -- including in the case of this week's featured dessert, the carrot cake. In the United States -- the country most often associated with this creative way of using up leftover carrots -- a carrot cake is an oil-based cake whose batter includes some but not always all of the following: grated carrot, raisins, pineapple, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Invariably and regrettably, American carrot cake is smothered in cream cheese frosting, as ever no one who has ever made or sold this cake trusts the recipient to ingest a cake made from carrots unless it has been masked by a sweet, sour, creamy cloak. That complaint aside, between the oil and carrots, raisins and pineapple, American carrot cake is always moist, soft, and tender.
Cut to Austria, where I first began to notice the creeping presence of carrot cake a couple of years ago. I purchased a slice from a well-known Viennese bakery (which shall remain nameless) and was, let's say, surprised at what I encountered. As a representative recipe from the Vollpension cookbook shows, Austrian carrot cake is not fruity and moist but rather a quite dry concoction in which carrots and ground nuts are cast in an egg suspension. In brief, Austrian carrot cake is made by beating egg yolks and sugar together until creamy, and to this, lemon zest, vanilla, cinnamon, and ground cloves are added, followed by rum. Then beaten egg whites and a mixture of flour, ground nuts, and baking powder are added alternately until the batter comes together. The cake is finished, once baked, not with cream cheese frosting but a plain glaze made from icing sugar and lemon juice. Not every Viennese cake can be a gem.
