Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Carrot cake



I made a carrot cake recently. I've tried a few recipes lately and this recipe by Paul Hollywood was by far the best.

Mine looks nowhere near as good as his, but tasted great all the same!

This is the recipe copied from the website.

Ingredients
  1. 155ml sunflower oil, plus extra for greasing
  2. 230g self-raising flour
  3. 1 tsp baking powder
  4. 1½ tsp ground cinnamon
  5. ½ tsp mixed spice
  6. ½ tsp ground ginger
  7. 230g light brown muscovado sugar
  8. Finely grated zest of 1 satsuma or mandarin, plus strips to decorate
  9. 100g pecans, halved
  10. 260g carrots, coarsely grated
  11. 3 medium free-range eggs, beaten
  12. For the icing
  13. 50g butter, softened
  14. 200g full-fat cream cheese 150g icing sugar, plus extra to dust
  15. 2 tsp orange juice

Method

  1. 1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan160°C/gas 4. Grease an 18cm loose-bottomed round cake tin and line the base with baking paper. Sift the flour, baking powder and spices into a large bowl. Add the sugar, zest, pecans and grated carrots, then stir until well combined. Stir in the beaten eggs and oil, then mix well.
  2. 2. Pour into the prepared cake tin and bake in the oven for 1 hour or until a skewer comes out clean. Transfer to a cooling rack, leave in the tin for 5 minutes, then turn out and leave to cool completely before icing.
  3. 3. For the icing, beat the butter in a large bowl with a hand mixer until really soft. Add the cream cheese and beat again until well mixed. Sift over the icing sugar, add the orange juice, then beat until smooth. Store, covered, in the fridge until needed.
  4. 4. To decorate, fill a piping bag (see above) fitted with a plain, small nozzle with icing, then carefully pipe lines across the top of the cake. Give the cake a quarter of a turn and pipe more lines across. Dust with a little icing sugar and scatter some grated satsuma/mandarin zest on the top.

10 comments:

  1. carrot cake with cream cheese icing is probably my most favourite cake ever - reminds me of my childhood!!

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  2. Yum yum yum!! I love carrot cake. My fave recipe is very similar (although from another source) with oil instead of butter. I love it as it stays really moist. Plus you can argue that it's more healthy (using vegetable oil rather than butter being less damaging on the old arteries....even if just as naughty on the hips!) I usually include raisins/sultanas, but will be trying pecans next time...yum!
    Sarah :) x

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  3. Oh I love carrot cake ... I will have to give this a go ... thanks for sharing ... Bee xx

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  4. Oh yum, I love carrot cake, and I love the frosting even more. I basically only bake carrot cake so I've got an excuse to eat the frosting. x

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  5. thank you sweetie, chuck LOVES carrot cake, i shall have to make him one! please take care with your baby bump climbing up on chairs or stepstools for your photos, that is the worrying mum in me!

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  6. I am very impressed, I am no good at baking and even though I had said I would make a carrot cake for my husband's birthday I decided to do something easier like a chocolate cake instead! Do you think I have hope going for your recipe? Maybe I should try anyway... /maria x

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  7. It looks delicious! And if you tested it and tell that it's really good, I trust you absolutely.. I'll try it! Thanks for sharing.. :)

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