How a Food52 Board Meeting Led Me to Baking My New Favorite Carrot Cake

One of my favorite things about baking is feeding people and sharing my desserts. While the hungry crowd in our office eagerly devours every last crumb that comes out of the Test Kitchen (unless it’s not good, which I must admit, sometimes happens), there’s something extra special about when someone makes a request.

Every so often at Food52 HQ, our team holds board meetings in a conference room fittingly named “Cheese Board.” (I know. It’s great.) They usually order catering for lunch, but more often than not, they also ask the Test Kitchen to supplement the menu. To be completely honest, these requests initially spike my heart rate—probably because I’m such a perfectionist and never want to serve something I’m not 100 percent happy with, and most of the time, when I cook for internal events, I’m working with a recipe that’s still in the testing phase or creating something completely new.

But ask any of my close friends, and they’ll tell you—I’m slow at making decisions. The endless possibilities of what I could bake sometimes leave me stuck, which isn’t exactly ideal for a recipe developer. I’m always thinking about the next best thing. But in this job (and most others), you can’t overthink every process, recipe, or step. You have to keep moving forward and trust that your choices are on the right track—otherwise, you could brainstorm a recipe for days. So when the idea of carrot cake popped into my head, I didn’t just walk with it—I ran. I already had a solid recipe for Carrot Cake with a Kick, so I decided to tweak the batter, write up new frosting measurements, and transform it into something completely different.

My original recipe featured brown butter, whole wheat flour, and cayenne spiced nuts in the cake, plus a brown butter buttercream. For this version, I swapped the brown butter for a neutral oil to create an ultra-moist crumb, then I replaced the spiced nuts with toasted coconut flakes, nixed the whole wheat flour, and made a classic cream cheese frosting using my favorite—Philadelphia Cream Cheese—with a touch of heavy cream. Instead of assembling it like a traditional layer cake, I baked the batter in a large rectangular pan, cut the sponge into mini cakes, and piped on the buttercream in a cool, organic squiggly pattern. The cake itself needed no tweaks, but I lost count of how many cups of powdered sugar went into the frosting—so a second test is definitely happening.

If I do say so myself, this recipe is pretty great, and I can’t wait to share it with you. So if you’re reading this, stay tuned! Carrot cake is never out of season, and there’s always a reason to make it, even when that reason is serious business.

---

Do you have a favorite kind of carrot cake? Are you all about mix-ins, or do you prefer a simple, classic version like me? Let me know in the comments!