Here's a little surprise this afternoon...please read on and see if you can help me figure this out?

I made two carrot cake layers today (from scratch) and when I leveled them, there were pieces here and there inside the cake that looked like shredded zucchini! I pulled a couple out of the cake scraps and it they were definitely green. Now, most of the carrots in the cake were still orange, but these mutant things bothered me. I pulled out another piece and it was green but had carrot-orange on the last third of the shred. So I think something happened to my carrots.

I used Ina Garten's Pineapple Carrot cake recipe pretty much by the book. Only change I made was to reduce oil and add 4 oz Granny Smith applesauce. I used a bag of pre-shredded carrots, but I rechopped every handful I pulled out of that bag so to make smaller pieces. I saw all the carrots that went into this cake as I was chopping! Looking back I saw one single shred with a touch of green on the end from where the carrot stem used to be, but I can't imagine I missed this many green shreds!!

I've made carrot cake from scratch before and have never seen this. Has this happened to anyone else??? What should I do now? This cake is not cheap to make if I have to do it over. I just can't figure this out.

Thanks for any help!

A while back someone posted the same question and one of the replies was that the peel of the carrot turns green in baking- I have seen recipes that specify not to use the pre-shredded carrots from the grocery store and I wondered if that was the reason why. I can't seem to find the previous thread on it... perhaps someone else can be of more help to you... best wishes!

Wow, they sell pre-shredded carrots? Pre-diced onions, bell peppers, celery, roux in jars, now pre-shredded carrots...what is the world coming to?

But high-five on making a carrot cake from scratch!

Hmmm, interesting. I didn't think of that; the peel thing, I mean. I guess if carrots are shredded by machine, the machine certainly isn't gonna peel them first. Lol! Thanks for that headsup, Bijoudelanuit!

Yes, Cakepro, I always use this recipe for a scratch carrot cake, it's so yummy! But I usually shred carrots by hand. I was trying out the pre-shred to save some time. Oh well!v