Can I Make The Ginger And Walnut Carrot Cake With Whole Wheat Flour?

Our answer

Nigella's Ginger And Walnut Carrot Cake (from AT MY TABLE) is more rustic than an American-style carrot cake as it is closer in texture and more tender and crumbly. We suspect that you could use a combination of half whole wheat (wholemeal) flour and half all-purpose (plain) flour, which would be ¾ cup plus 1 tablespoon (100g) of each type of flour. The grated carrot gives the cake plenty of moisture, but as whole wheat flour tends to absorb more liquid, we feel that using too much whole wheat flour could make the cake slightly dry. For the US we would suggest using whole wheat pastry flour if you can find it, as regular whole wheat flour has a higher gluten content and is better suited to breadmaking than cakes. For the UK use plain wholemeal flour and not strong wholemeal flour or self-raising wholemeal flour.

This cake is not ideally suited as a layer cake since, as already mentioned, it is quite tender and this makes it more difficult to move the layers around without them breaking up. However, if you really want to try and make it into a layer cake then we would suggest doubling the recipe and baking it in two 9-inch (23cm) springform pans. Check the cakes after 40 minutes of baking, but bake until the cakes are golden brown on top, starting to pull away from the sides of the pans and a cake tester inserted into the centre comes out with just a few crumbs attached to it (but not uncooked cake batter). This will make slightly thinner cakes than for the original recipe, which would be better for a layer cake. Make sure the cakes are completely cold before you try to sandwich them together. As the quantities of frosting are quite generous, we suspect that a double quantity will be enough to sandwich and top the cake. But please note that as we have not tried to make this cake as a layer cake ourselves, we are unable to guarantee the results.