One of my favourite cakes to make is carrot cake with cream cheese icing, it always turns out great and is demolished very quickly! They can be expensive to make so I don’t bake them that often however it was my mums birthday the other month and I couldn’t think of a better cake to whip up than a carrot cake as it is one of her favourites. Personally I’m not that keen on cinnamon so I don’t normally add any to carrot cake however if you like cinnamon then add a teaspoon to this recipe when the bicarbonate of soda is added.
It’s a delicious moist carrot cake that crumbles in your mouth, I’ve tweaked the recipe quite a few times and I’m now over the moon with how it turns out. I like to scrape around the edge of the cake to give it a slightly naked feel as you can see the sponge peaking through and I love how it looks, I also sprinkled a few walnuts on the top not just for decoration but also for added nuttiness.
For the cake:
- 150ml rapeseed oil
- 130g soft brown sugar
- 200g self-raising flour
- 2 medium eggs
- 200g carrots
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- zest of 1 orange
For the cream cheese icing:
- 225g cream cheese
- 100g butter
- 450g icing sugar
- 100g chopped walnuts
- 1 vanilla pod (or 1 tsp vanilla extract)
- The first thing you want to do is preheat the oven to 180C and lightly grease two cake tins with butter.
- Then add the sugar and oil into a bowl and mix well.
- After this you will want to add both of the eggs slowly, if the mixture looks like it’s going to curdle then add a little bit of flour.
- Fold in the flour.
- Add the carrots, bicarbonate of soda and zest of one orange then mix together.
- Split the mixture into two tins and bake in the oven for around 25 minutes or until you can insert a knife into the cake and it comes out clean.
- While that’s baking in the oven you can make the cream cheese icing but mixing the cream cheese and butter together until light and fluffy. I like to use my electric mixer and leave it on for around 5 minutes.
- Then add the vanilla pod and icing sugar, a little bit at a time. You will know it is done when the icing has turned nice and thick, you can then add the walnuts to the icing and mix together.
- Once the cake has baked leave it to cool before filling and icing with the cream cheese icing.
Carrot cake is one of my favourites and this recipe is my go-to and the only that I always use, my mum actually uses the same recipe as she loves to bake it too.
Rebecca x
