This one looks interesting too. CIA's Carrot Cake 16 servings Hands on: 30 minutes Total time: 1 hour, 15 minutes This recipe, taken from "Baking at Home With the Culinary Institute of America" (John Wiley & Sons, $40), has a dense, strong crumb from the use of bread flour and is leavened with baking soda and baking powder (which contributes to the fineness of the crumb). It contains nuts and is baked in a tube pan, which I don't prefer to layers. The strength of the bread flour can stand up to coarsely grated carrots. It uses the whipping method - whipping the eggs with oil and then incorporating the other ingredients - which is rare for a carrot cake. This method gives the crumb a finer texture and a little more volume. 1 2/3 cups granulated sugar 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 2/3 cups bread flour 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 1 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 3 large eggs 2/3 cup vegetable oil 2 cups grated carrots 1/2 cup chopped, toasted walnuts (pecans if desired) Cream Cheese Frosting, whipped cream or confectioners' sugar Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease and flour a 10-inch tube or bundt pan. Sift the sugar and salt into a medium bowl and set aside. In another bowl, sift together the flour, cinnamon, baking soda and baking powder and set aside. Whip the eggs on medium speed until thick, about 3 minutes. Increase speed to high and continue whipping until the eggs fall in thick ribbons from the whisk, about 4 minutes. Gradually add the oil and continue to whip until evenly blended. Add the sugar mixture slowly to the egg mixture while continuing to whip at medium speed until well-blended. Add the flour mixture to the batter, mixing on low speed until just incorporated. Fold in the carrots and walnuts by hand using a rubber spatula. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake until a wooden pick inserted near the center comes out clean, 45 to 50 minutes. Cool the cake in the pan for a few minutes before turning out onto a wire rack. Cool completely before icing and slicing. If made in a straight-sided tube pan, the cake can be frosted with Cream Cheese Frosting. For a bundt cake, sprinkle with confectioners' sugar and serve with whipped cream, if desired. Per serving, with Cream Cheese Frosting: 520 calories (percent of calories from fat, 50), 5 grams protein, 62 grams carbohydrates, 1 gram fiber, 29 grams fat (11 grams saturated), 66 milligrams cholesterol, 172 milligrams sodium. Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/style/hfe/recipes/articles/0325carrotcake25rec.html#ixzz1iWKym72M

I haven't made this yet, but I printed this recipe off of another site and there are a few differences from the one you posted. I'm not enough of a baker to know if these differences would solve the problem but the recipe I have calls for one and three quarters cups of sifted cake flour not two cups and a 325 oven not 350. Everything else is pretty much the same (except for "mild" honey instead of honey). I don't have her book and this recipe is not on Food Network so I don't know which one is the "real" one.

I agree, check your oven temperature. There are some other things that come to mind you may want to check. - Are you using the correct size pan? It's not uncommon for people to think a 9x5-inch (8-cups batter) and an 8-1/2x4-1/2-inch (6-cups batter) loaf pans are interchangeable. You can get different results based on your pan color, as well. - Insufficient creaming... Start with room temperature butter, not overly-soft or overly-hard butter. "Room temperature" butter is 65°F (18°C), and you can check it with an instant read thermometer. The butter temperature is important for maximum incorporation of air. "The Simple Art of Perfect Baking", recommends creaming for 4-5 minutes, and other "experts" recommend 6-10 minutes. Hand beaters take longer to cream well than a heavy-duty mixer - scrape down the sides several times for complete creaming. The point being, don't rush this portion of preparation. - Try checking for doneness by using an instant read thermometer. Pound cakes are done at 210°F. -Grainlady

It will probably work with the really fine kind of cake meal. I have issues with M. cake meal. I think it tastes like the sands of the desert that the Israelites crossed and is meant to remind us of eating dust before we entered the Promised Land. But, yeah, even when I've made non-Passover sponge cakes they've been with separated eggs and no fat, or occasionally a chiffon with a bit of oil, for something denser, like honeycake. I don't want a rich, butter sponge cake! I want it to be poofy and puff out air when you bite it and be all eggy and light as down. Though a thoroughly Jewish way to make it rich is to top it with sour cream. :) I don't think it's probably a good combination if you didn't grow up with it, but orange or almond sponge cake with sour cream is one of those remembered delights from childhood. :) Joy of Baking has a nice article about sponges and other "foam" cakes. I think my resistance to the butter is about blurring. Butter cakes are rich, moist, a little sticky. Sponge cakes are fluffy, light, a little crumbly. They have such different crumbs. Trying to make a sponge with butter to prove that you can by whipping enough is a fun experiment, but if you put a slice of it and a slice of butter cake next to each other, you won't get as much of that feeling that you're eating two different cakes! Everything blurs to the center, when all of the interesting stuff is at the edges.