needs more sugar

I can’t remember the last time I had carrot cake. It’s not that I don’t like it, ’cause I do.. it’s just one of those classics that fell off the radar for a while I guess.

We’re back in full force in the office, our first birthday for the year (Happy Birthday Andrea!) already – which means.. apron on, oven mitts out, time to bake!

The New Year’s healthy eating kick is still alive and kicking for a few of us, so it was a wise suggestion to try to make something at least semi (delusional? me?) healthy. I mean, it has carrots (also nut free btw) in it..

…a serve of veggies right here people!

…..if you eat the whole cake!

………any takers?

Ingredients:

Vegetable oil, or melted butter to grease
2 (about 300g) carrots
1 cup (150g) self-raising flour
1/2 cup (75g) plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup (80g) brown sugar
1/2 cup (125ml) oil
1/2 cup (125ml) golden syrup
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
3/4 cup dessicated coconut -  I added this in to give a bit of extra yumminess

Cream cheese frosting:

500g spreadable cream cheese
1 cup (160g) icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
Zest 1 lemon

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 170°C. Grease a 20cm (base) round cake pan lightly with oil, and line with non-stick baking paper.
2. Peel and grate the carrots and set aside
3. Sift the flours, bicarbonate of soda and cinnamon into a large bowl.
4. Put the brown sugar, oil, golden syrup, eggs and vanilla in a separate bowl. Use a balloon whisk to mix until combined.
5. Pour the oil mixture into the dry ingredients. Use a wooden spoon to stir gently until just combined. Stir in the grated carrot.
6. Pour the mixture into the pan and bake for 1 hour.
7. Set aside for 5 minutes, before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
8. To make the icing, place the cream cheese, icing sugar and vanilla in standing mixer. Mix on low speed at first otherwise you’ll get icing sugar everywhere, turn up speed – when smooth add in the lemon zest
9. Cut the cake in half when cooled
10. Spread the icing across the bottom half of the cake, replace top and add remaining frosting

Crumbs…

• The cream cheese frosting listed above is double what the recipe called for, if you’re like me and love a bit of frosting to break up your cakes then go by this. I still have a bit leftover, maybe use it on some cupcakes!
• I didn’t have a 20cm pan, only a 23cm one so baked it for about 50 mins, it wasn’t dry at all
• The frosting recipe also didn’t call for lemon zest, but everyone likes lemon zest!

Recipe adapted from Taste website.

Tags: carrots, cream cheese, lemon

This entry was posted on January 11, 2011 at 5:43 pm and is filed under cakes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.