A slice of banana bread is on a plate next to a cup of coffee and pears.
To me, Carrot Cake is a vegetable!
There aren't too many childhood food memories I have of which weren't Italian...
My mother 'Claire's Carrot Cake' is one of the best!
A black and white photo of a man and woman holding flowers
A bunch of carrots are sitting on a black surface.
A man is holding a bunch of carrots in front of a tractor.

Prep Time: 20 min

Cooking Time: 30 min

Yield: 6 portions


Ingredients

2 Cups        AP Flour

2 Cups        Sugar

2 tsp            Baking powder

1 1/2 tsp     Baking soda

2 tsp            Cinnamon

1 Cup            Oil

4 ea.             Eggs, cracked &  whisked (no shells)

3/4 Cups     Crushed Pineapple, drained

2 Cups         Carrots, shredded (from your garden)

3/4 Cups     Golden raisins

3/4 Cups     Walnuts, toasted, chopped    

                          (rub the walnut skins off w a towl)


Cream Cheese Frosting

6 oz         Cream cheese

2 Tbsp     Milk

2 tsp         Vanilla extract

41/2  C     Confectioners' sugar


How to Prepare Carrot Cake

Step 1

Blend the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, oil and eggs together in a mixing bowl.

Step 2

Add the pineapple, shredded carrots and blend. Fold in the golden raisins & toasted walnuts.

Step 3

Pour the batter into an oiled/buttered cake mold (I use my brownie pan) and bake at 350 F (preheated oven) for 35 minutes or until the cake is cooked.

Cool at room temperature.

Step 4

To prepare the cream cheese frosting, simply blend the cream cheese, vanilla and sugar together (slow speed at first so the powdered sugar doesn't fly all over the kitchen) until smooth.


I enjoy carrot cake with powdered sugar shaken on top like a spice cake but you can frost the top and/or split and frost middle and top with cream cheese frosting as well.

For special occasions I usually color some of the frosting green and orange and pipe carrot decorations on top of the cake.



Claire's Carrot Cake

At some point my mother learned about Julia Child & began baking Paris Brest, strudels, chocolate cakes &  Carrot cake.

I remember she actually won a baking contest with this Carrot Cake recipe.








I owned a little restaurant & we had a nice, dessert trolley at dinner every night. I made simple 'chef desserts' such as floating islands, mousses, tarts & my mother baked fantasic pound cakes, cookies, pies, cream puffs, etc... & her famous carrot cake! This is us at the restaurant, TW Griffy's on Mother's Day.




Now, I actually grow a few varieties of carrots in the garden at home. I like growing sweet carrots like danvers, dantes and especially the small, round, Thumbelina. The carrots actually get sweeter after being in the ground over the winter.


I'm experimenting with carrot ketchup, bbq and sriracha recipes as well as carrot top pesto and soup recipes.



I did a good amount of carrot research with Ronnie Abrams, an amazing, local carrot farmer in my area. He actually grows acres and acres of carrots for large soup companies & taught me a lot about different varieties of carrots.

 


A tray of food with a slice taken out of it

Soup; Pumpkin Soup

By Tom Griffiths • October 31, 2025
Every culture seems to have its own way of celebrating squash. Years ago, when I was invited to assist the amazing Puerto Rican Chef Alfredo Ayala at Worlds of Flavor at the CIA San Antonio campus. I spent the morning carefully preparing diced pumpkin and other mise en place for Puerto Rican Sofrito, Adobo & Habichuelas Guisadas (Bean Soup) Chef Ayala arrived in the kitchen with a paper bag of Ají dulce, (Rocotillo peppers) from Puerto Rico and the other Latin chefs went wild! When he came to greet me he tossed all of my pumpkin dice into the garbage, poured a few cups of rice onto the table and discussed how to peel garlic. He explained he had eaten this same, exact rice dish every day of his life and shared the pumpkin I had prepared was for Halloween; he needed butternut squash. I had told the procurement chef the same thing earlier but decided to keep that to myself… an absolutely amazing experience learning to cook pumpkin and rice with Chef Ayala, a true master!

'Fines Herbs': Freshness, Balance & Cooking

By Tom Griffiths • October 30, 2025
Fines Herbes: Freshness, Balance, and History Art and Science of Growing & Cooking with 'Fines Herbs'

Seafood; Salmon Fillet

By Tom Griffiths • October 21, 2025
I was very fortunate to spend several months on a cruise ship traveling around Alaska and Canada. I was able to learn how fisherman caught salmon and the native Alaskan people canned salmon. There are five types of salmon, the guides loved to share the 'salmon fingers trick'. King salmon is considered the most flavorful salmon with a fatty, buttery flavor. (This is the longer, middle finger) Coho or Silver salmon is firmer with a milder flavor (ring finger for silver); Sockeye salmon (pointer finger) is lean and has a darker red color. Pink salmon (pinky finger) is most common and used by Alaskan people for canning and Chum (thumb) salmon is mild and seems to be the least popular. I prefer farm raised, Atlantic salmon for forcemeats due to the milder flavor and fatty texture. I spent a week fishing for halibut in Alaska and we rigged up the belly of a chum salmon for bait... it worked really well!

Corn Fritters

By Tom Griffiths • October 17, 2025
My mother liked to cook a variety of fritters, with leftover holiday ham or turkey but in the summer she prepared delicious squash flower or corn fritters which were more like savory pancakes and inspired this recipe.

Beyond Pesto: The Art and Science of Growing & Cooking with Herbs

By Tom Griffiths • October 17, 2025
Beyond Pesto: The Art and Science of Growing & Cooking with Herbs 

Dessert; Fresh Fruit Crostata

By Tom Griffiths • October 8, 2025
I've been growing figs for more than 50 years! In fact, I have about a dozen fig trees in my yard. Several are from cuttings propagated from trees at my parent's home and one fig tree is from a cutting of a fig tree in Monticello! I like to think Thomas Jefferson and I enjoy delicious figs from the same tree...

Beginners recipe: Corn

By Tom Griffiths • October 8, 2025
I liked to begin each class day of Skills Development class at the CIA with a quote. One of my favorites went something like this, 'You can walk to the corn fields but you must run back to the kitchen'. Basically it speaks to the sugars in sweet quickly converting to starch when it's harvested. We Chefs know a thing or two about food chemistry...
image of traditional paella

How Our Kitchens Have Lost Their Soul-What We’re Losing and Why It Matters

By Tom Griffiths • August 13, 2025
More and more the loss of technique and understanding of traditional ingredients is destroying the soul of American kitchens. But there is hope.

Beginners recipe: Pesto

By Tom Griffiths • July 17, 2025
I agreed to be the Chef Advisor for the Gourmet Society at the CIA, an amazing honor to work with some of the best and brightest students. We planned to demonstrate preparing pesto with a mortar and pestle and also with a food processor-then evaluate them both side by side. We all suspected that the food processor would aerate the pesto, possibly the heat generated would be a problem- One student brought in a molcajete, the traditional mortar from Mexico, made from volcanic rock used for grinding spices, making salsas, moles, etc... I'm not sure this was the preferred mortar and pestle to use, these days I often use a marble mortar and pestle and make small batches. The 'mortar and pestle' pesto was much more delicious than the food processor version at the CIA that day.

Beginners Recipe: Chicken Sauté

By Tom Griffiths • July 17, 2025
I was born to sauté... I remember thinking this and smiling when I finally made my way up in the kitchen brigade to the Saucier spot. I loved the pulse of the kitchen, working the saute station with a dozen sauté pans on the flat top, delicious stocks and mother sauces held hot in the steam table and carefully prepared mise en place so I could make delicious meals for the customers... one order or two at the time. Everything was cooked with love and respect.