Carrot Cake

By: Pete on 18:39:00

I've done carrot cake before, however I've not done it with walnuts, and the other recipe is a traybake. I wanted to do this as a more traditional cake. I had a couple of missing ingredients (mainly orange-based...turns out that near Christmas supermarkets start to get out of stock on all sorts of things).

I also wanted to do this as a slightly smaller cake...I settled on a 16cm cake tin, and went about tweaking the recipe to cater for what I had in the house, and also for the smaller size. Decoration should have been in the form of candied orange peel, something I'd like to give a go, as it adds loads of colour. As it was I went for a cinnamon-based icing, which has a good flavour, but looks a little muddy.

I probably over-based it by about 5 minutes (I did 55 minutes, as I'm always a little nervous that a moist cake like this will be under in the middle)...otherwise it's delicious!

Carrot Cake - Recipe

• Pre-heat oven to 160'C
• Lightly grease a deep 16cm cake tin

Cake Ingredients

• 150g self-raising flour
• 150g muscavado sugar
• 3g baking powder
• 5g ground cinnamon
• 2g mixed spice
• 2g ground ginger
• 30g candied peel (orange and lemon)
• 70g walnuts
• 175g grated carrot
• 2 large eggs
• 100g sunflower oil

1) Place the flour, sugar, baking powder a8nd spices in a large bowl, and mix together

2) Add the candied peel, walnuts and carrot, and mix together

3) In a measuring jug, whisk the eggs and sunflower oil together

4) Add the egg mixture to the bowl, and stir using a wooden spoon until there are no dry pockets of ingredients

5) Scrape the batter into the prepared cake tin

6) Level the top, then place in the oven for 45-50 minutes. A skewer should come out cleanly when inserted when the cake is done.

7) Leave to cool on a wire rack until you can handle the tin. Then, remove the cake from the tin and leave to cool completely.

8) Cut the cake in half to prepare for the filling and topping

Cream Cheese Icing - Ingredients

• 35g softened butter
• 135 full-fat cream cheese
• 65g icing sugar
• 4g ground cinnamon (+ more for sprinkling)

1) Put the butter in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment

2) Beat the butter until it is soft. Make sure to scrape the sides down and re-beat, to make sure no firm bits are left

3) Add the cream cheese, and beat hard

4) Add the cinnamon and sieved icing sugar, and beat thoroughly

5) Transfer to a bowl, cover with cling-film, and place in the fridge until needed.

6) To finish the cake, spread half the filling on the lower half of the cake, and form a sandwich with the top half

7) Spread the remaining icing on top of the cake, and spread out using a palette knife. Lightly sprinkle some cinnamon on top.