carrot cake

A while back I blogged about a recipe for carrot cake that I used and thought was really good but that the timings, for me anyway, were a bit off. So this weekend I gave it another shot and here is the recipe I am now happy with!

150g plain flour
1tsp baking powder
1tsp cinnamon powder
150g caster sugar
250g grated carrot
100g shelled walnuts, chopped
150ml corn/vegetable oil
2 eggs, beaten
1tsp vanilla essence

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees
Grease and line a cake tin
Sieve flour, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder and cinnamon powder in a mixing bowl
Stir in the caster sugar, walnuts and carrots - mix well


Pour in the oil, eggs and vanilla essence and stir well


Beat mixture for one minute
Put the cake batter into the tin and bake for 60 minutes
Remove and leave to cool for five minutes before turning onto a cooling rack
leave to cool completely

For the icing:

50g butter - room temp
75g cream cheese - full fat
Half a teaspoon of vanilla essence
100g icing sugar

Beat the butter until smooth then add the cream cheese and vanilla essence
Gradually stir in the icing sugar
Spread the icing over the cake


This pic turned out a bit weird - I don't know why - my lack of photography skills perhaps!

If you like you could keep back a handful of walnuts and decorate with them.

If you want to cut the cake in half and have icing inside too - up your icing ingredients by a third. You can do it with the original recipe but I like plenty of icing!!!