Cashew Car­rot Torte

I decided to try my hand at Brennan’s Cashew Car­rot torte, which is described as a grown-up car­rot cake. In my Brennan’s cook­book I found the ingre­di­ents to be fairly accu­rate, how­ever the book has been short on instruc­tions and tech­nique. Read­ing through the cake recipe I real­ized that if you have not made a cake before you not be able to fig­ure it out from this recipe. First up, I keep say­ing cake although this recipe is for a torte. In Amer­ica, we rarely make the dif­fer­ence between the two. Bak­ers know that a torte will be 1 layer and richer than a cake; some­times it will con­tain mul­ti­ple lay­ers sep­a­rated by a thin layer of pre­serves or jelly, and often not topped with an icing. It is usu­ally intended as a snack or for after­noon tea. A cake will have mul­ti­ple lay­ers and be but­tery. It is usu­ally topped with an icing or ganache and is intended for dessert or par­ties. This recipe is fairly time inten­sive so I had to make 2 cakes — well, in all truth I was giv­ing one of the cakes to my daugh­ters school so I needed make a tast­ing cake before the teach­ers got a hold of it. Since it came out well, I shared it with my co-workers and got a the thumbs up.

10 medium eggs
3.5 cups veg­etable oil
6 cups grated car­rots. Use a the mid­dle grate on a box grater. Peel the car­rots using a peeler before grat­ing.
4 table spoons gin­ger. Use a the mid­dle grate on a box grater.
1/2 cup fresh squeezed orange juice
1 tea­spoon orange zest. Note: I’ve also tried the recipe with 3 tbsp dried orange zest for more orange taste; can be found at Middle-Eastern mar­kets
4 tea­spoons vanilla extract
1 tea­spoon almond extract
4.5 cups sugar
2 tea­spoons cin­na­mon
3.5 cups chopped cashews. I used 2 cups cashews, 1 cup pecans, and, 1/2 cup wal­nuts
4 cups unsifted all-purpose flour
5 tea­spoons bak­ing pow­der.
2 tea­spoons kosher salt
rum sauce (see below)

I used a stand mixer for this cake. Once all the ingre­di­ents are in a bowl it will be dif­fi­cult to stir. I toasted the nuts for 7 min­utes on 350F, cooled, then placed them on the chop mode in a small food proces­sor for a few sec­onds. After mak­ing cake sev­eral times, I believe the best tex­ture for the nuts is a rough chop, how­ever fol­low your pref­er­ence. In a mix­ing bowl, add eggs (no need to beat ahead), oil, car­rots, gin­ger, orange juice, orange zest, and vanilla and almond extract. Fold in, until evenly dis­trib­uted. Move the mix­ing bowl to the stand mixer and set to “Stir” for 1 minute.

Add the sugar, cin­na­mon, and nuts to the mix­ing bowl. Set the stand mixer on Stir for 3 min­utes. The eggs will begin to emul­sify with the oil.
In a sep­a­rate dry bowl sift in the flour, bak­ing pow­der, and salt. Then add to the mix­ing bowl and set to 3 for 2 min­utes.
Pour the bat­ter into the 2 pre­pared pans. Bake for 1 hour and 25 min­utes. After 45 min­utes, rotate the pans 1/2 turn. Check the cake after 1 hour and 15 min­utes. You should be able to insert a tooth­pick into the cen­ter and it will come out clean.

This recipe can be divided in half for 1 cake. Pre­heat oven to 325 degrees. Pre­pare two 10″ pans. Apply a thin coat of but­ter, then dust with flour.

For the rum sauce
1/4 cup gran­u­lated sugar
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup fresh squeezed lime juice
1/2 cup dark 2 cup dark rum

Add the dark rum and lime juice to a saucepan. Cook on medium for 1 minute. Then add sug­ars and stir until sugar dis­solves. Bring to a boil for 1 minute. then remove from heat and set aside to cool. Poke many small holes in the top of the cake with a fork (for the sauce to enter). Once the sauce cools it will thicken. You can reheat it in a microwave to thin it out right before serving.