Warm Carrot–Macadamia Nut Cakes with Ginger and Crème Fraîche

In wartime England, when there was hardly anything to eat except potatoes and carrots, the orange root vegetable was added to desserts in place of sugar. We have that historic famine to thank for carrot cake’s popularity. There are other cases during World War II in which a vegetable was incorporated into cake baking: In the United States, when rations were limited, boiled beets were mixed into red velvet cake batters to intensify the layered treat’s coloring, and a number of recipes for th