Passover Baking Reimagined: Carrot Cake to Wow Your Senses

Passover Baking Reimagined: Carrot Cake to Wow Your Senses

10am PST

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Let’s be honest. Dessert and baked goods are usually one of the holiday’s greatest challenges. Enter Danny Corsun of Culinary Judaics Academy, who is about to introduce you to a Passover carrot cake you will be making all the way through August. Join his cooking demo, with AJU’s Deb Engel Kollin, and get a taste of the connections between Jewish traditions and culinary creativity.

CJA’s PASSOVER CARROT CAKE

• 2 cups sugar
• 1 1/3 cups vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 3 extra-large eggs
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp of potato starch
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp of cake meal
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 3 cups grated carrots 
• 1 cup raisins (golden or dark)
• 1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
• 1/2 cup canned crushed pineapple, drained

Frosting:

• 4 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
• Juice of ¼ lemon
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract 
• 1 ½ cups confectioners' sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 13 x 9 inch layer cake pan with parchment paper and spray with non-stick spray (or use butter). Beat the sugar, oil, and vanilla together in a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Add the eggs, 1 at a time. In another bowl, sift together the potato starch, cake meal, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt. With the mixer on low, add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Add the grated carrots, raisins, pineapple and walnuts (if using) - mix well until just combined.

Pour batter into prepared pan. Place in the middle rack of the oven and bake until the edges have pulled away from the sides of the pan and a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool on a rack for 10 minutes. Then invert it over a cake rack and unmold – remove parchment paper and continue to cool for 1 hour and then frost the tops and sides.

Frosting: Cream the cream cheese, butter with a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Add the vanilla, lemon and sugar and beat until smooth. **Add food coloring for even more FUN! Frost the cooled cake generously and serve. If making pareve, just omit the frosting and dust cake with powdered sugar – This can also be made into individual carrot muffins as well!

Danny Corsun has been a Chef-Educator for 20 years. As a classroom educator, he had the unique opportunity to create a program that taught academic disciplines through experientially engaging cooking classes. This program not only resulted in better student grades, but an environment that had students having the most fun they'd EVER had inside a classroom! In 2005, he retired from that one classroom to teach in thousands creating Culinary Kids Academy.

In 2009, Danny expanded, creating Culinary Judaics Academy – Infusing meaningful Jewish learning into cooking classes for ALL Jews, no matter their age or level of practice. In 2021 CJA unveiled its online learning platform (https://www.culinaryjudaicsacademy.com/) to bring its Jewishly empowering, innovative cooking workshops to the world! As Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “Judaism is caught, not taught.” And CJA could not agree more!

Deb Engel Kollin serves as the Relationship Manager for the Miller Introduction to Judaism Progrsm. Deb previously spent twelve years as Director of Operations for Pressman Academy, and has worked in various settings in Los Angeles and Israel as a Jewish educator and community builder for decades. She holds an MA in Jewish Education from American Jewish University.