Carrot Cake – The Great British Book of Baking

I didn’t manage to take a photo quick enough to get an uncut cake. This is only the second carrot cake I’ve ever made and to my mind this is superior to the Avoca carrot cake. It is from one of the Great British Bake-off (GBBO) tv series spin off baking books The Great British Book of Baking: 120 best-loved recipes from teatime treats to pies and pasties which is a lovely selection of truly British tea time treats. The aim of the book is to celebrate Britain’s baking heritage rather than feature recipes from contestants and as such if you only have one or two books on baking it would be a splendid choice.

This recipe contains walnuts and as you can see in the photo it is very definitely specked through with orange strands of carrot. It is a very soft cake and hard to cut tidily, since it is so soft I decided it would be too messy to go into school lunch boxes. It doesn’t taste too sweet the way some (especially commercial) carrot cakes do. One of my teens loves this cake, the other is not so sure but he will eat it.

Ingredients

For the Sponge

• 225g Self Raising Flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg (I used ground)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground mixed spice
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 225g soft light brown muscovado sugar
• Grated zest of 1/2 an unwaxed orange
• 100g walnut pieces
• 3 medium free-range eggs (beaten)
• 150ml sunflower oil
• 250g grated carrots (approx 3 medium carrots)

For the filling and topping

• 200g full-fat cream cheese
• 50g unsalted butter, softened (and it really does need to be soft)
• 150g icing sugar, sifted
• Grated zest of 1/2 an unwaxed orange
• 2 teaspoons of orange juice

Instructions

for the cake

1. Preheat the oven to 180°c
2. Grease and baseline two 20.5 cm round tins
3. Sift the flour, baking powder and spices into a large bowl
4. Use a wooden spoon to mix in the sugar, orange zest and nuts followed by the beaten eggs, sunflower oil and grated carrots.
5. When combined, divide the mixture between the two cake tins and spread evenly.
6. Bake in the oven for approximately 25 minutes or until a cake tester inserted into the centre comes out clean. Turn the cakes out onto a wire rack and leave to cool.

For the icing

1. Beat together all of the ingredients with a wooden spoon until very smooth and creamy. It should be of a spreadable consistency. (In warm weather you may need to cool the mixture in the fridge before using).
2. Spread almost half of the mixture onto one of the cakes. Top with the second cake and spread the remainder of the mixture over the top.
3. Optionally decorate the top of the cake with orange zest, walnuts or if you want to go completely over the top little marzipan carrots. I left mine plain.

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