Carrot cake with Tuscan spices

From Stephanie Alexander's new cookbook Home

Stephanie Alexander won’t need any introduction to Australians, she is a prolific and well known cookbook writer, restauranteur and now food educator. Her book The Cook’s Companion (1996), which you can even get in app form now, is the Australian “Joy of Cooking” and she has been a mentor to me ever since I first started writing cookbooks.

Her latest cookbook (of 17!), Home, is another tome of 200 recipes in Stephanie’s signature style — easy home cooking, beautiful flavours and wonderful stories. It’s the sort of cookbook that will become an instant Australian classic and will teach people how to cook and fall in love with food. You’ll find recipes like cauliflower roasted with tumeric, dates and pepitas; oxtail and mushroom pie for one; homemade fettucine with butter, lemon and rocket; sweetcorn pudding; crab sandwiches with tomato and saffron jam; hot and sour fish soup; scallops with tomato and basil butter; mussels under a cheesy crust; chicken congee; melted sweet pepper and witlof; banana and passionfruit meringue layer cake — ok, I’m just leafing through the book here and literally every recipe is something I’d love to make and eat.

While flipping through it the other day, I was so flattered to see my name come up more than once! I knew she was including my carrot gnocchi recipe from my blog in there (which she jazzes up with fried capers — delicious!) as I was contacted a while ago from the publishers for permission. But I was very happy to see that Stephanie also included my instructions for properly purging clams and for Tuscan spices, where she talked about this blog post on Tuscan “droghe” — drugs, as they have been known for centuries. It’s an old fashioned mix of spices that often includes cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, aniseed, fennel, pepper, coriander seed, juniper berries, orange zest and more. This mix goes into sopressata, salame or sausages, but even in the hare sauce with pappardelle that I had over the weekend. You could use it in panforte too. There are versions with chunks of chocolate, raisins and pine nuts as well, and you might be thinking this version isn’t for savoury dishes but actually it is — specifically for game, so that hare sauce for example, and wild boar with chocolate, another classic Tuscan dish with droghe.

But going back to the carrot cake, while not a typical Tuscan cake, these spices are wonderful here, and Stephanie’s cake also has a delicious streusel topping that includes some of the spices too. I love the idea that Stephanie talks about in her head note to this recipe that she made her own droghe mix:

“I went ahead and mixed the spices identified by Emiko, adding my own touch of a little pepper and reducing the fennel seed. After all, historically every establishment had its own droghe mix, so why not me too? I have stored my droghe in a small jar and labelled it Tuscan spice to avoid any confusion.”

As you’d imagine, Stephanie’s recipes are foolproof. This cake has such good structure and it stayed moist and delicious for days. I even misread the instructions and put the streusel topping on at the beginning and not towards the end of baking (some of it sank a little, so it’s not as thick as hers) but it came out beautifully anyway. I used the droghe mix that had raisins and pine nuts in it too, which I think they work very nicely in there too!

Stephanie Alexander’s Carrot cake with Tuscan spices

150 gr plain flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 teaspoons Dutch process cocoa
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
150 gr fine sugar
50 gr soft brown sugar
1/2 cup grapeseed oil (I used olive oil)
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 free range eggs
200 gr carrots, peeled and grated

Tuscan Spice Mix:
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons freshly grated nutmeg
2 teaspoons ground cloves
2 teaspoons crushed coriander seeds
1 1/2 teaspoons crushed fennel seeds
a few turns of the pepper mill

Streusel topping:
1/4 cup plain flour
35 grams butter
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon Tuscan Spice Mix

Preheat the oven to 180C (160C fan forced). Mix the Tuscan Spice Mix ingredients together and store in a jar. Butter and line a 20cm cake tin.

For the streusel, rub the butter with the other ingredients in a small bowl and set aside (until the cake is half cooked — note, I misread this and didn’t do it in these photos! So some of it sank into the cake!).

For the cake, sift the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and cocoa into a bowl. Stir in 1 tablespoon of the spice mix and salt.

With an electric mixer, cream the sugars, oil, vanilla and eggs together. Beat until thick and smooth for 2 minutes, then tip in the flour and combine with a spatula. Add the carrot and combine well. Scrape this batter into the prepared tin.

Place the cake in the centre of the oven and set the timer for 40 minutes. Scatter the streusel topping over the top of the cake and continue baking another 20 minutes. A fine skewer inserted in the centre should come out clean — and another hint: the house should be perfumed with spices now!

Cool for a few minutes before releasing the spring. Keeps well in an airtight tin for several days.