On the subject of raisins in carrot cake, the food writer Allison Robicelli once wrote for Taste Cooking, “They don’t just get to show up in desserts, acting like they belong there when they have no business stepping outside of the world of trail mix.”
However you may feel on the matter — raisins or no raisins? — it’s safe to say that we are now in full Carrot Cake Mode, that time of year when spring is on the verge of all its Technicolor glory: blossoms, rainbow-stained eggs and floppy-eared bunnies. And what do bunnies love? Carrots, right?
Wrong. According to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, rabbits don’t even “naturally eat root vegetables.” Bugs Bunny’s carrot spawned a generational myth.
But you know what’s not a myth? Our love for a slice of perfect carrot cake with cream cheese frosting (above). This one from Dorie Greenspan, a tenured professor of cake baking, is a lesson in you-can-have-it-all-ism: shredded coconut, chopped nuts AND raisins! In typical Dorie fashion, she even teaches you how to get the most out of those raisins; if they “are not moist and plump when you mix them into the batter,” she advised, “they’re not going to magically become moist and plump in the oven.”
