Carrot cake is a moist, moreish and incredibly popular recipe. Who would have thought that one of your favourite desserts would be made from common garden vegetables!
Ingredients
- Butter, for greasing
- 100g raisins
- 4 tbsp sweet sherry or orange juice
- 3 large free-range eggs
- 175ml sunflower oil
- 200g light muscovado sugar
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 225g self-raising flour
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 50g desiccated coconut
- 60g walnut pieces, plus extra for the topping
- 200g carrot, roughly grated
For the icing
- 300g low-fat cream cheese
- 50g icing sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Method
- 1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan160°C/gas 4. Grease a 22cm round, loose-bottomed cake tin with a little butter. Line the base of the tin with a circle of baking paper.
- 2. Place the raisins in a pan with the sherry or orange juice and bring to the boil. Simmer gently for 2 minutes until the raisins have absorbed all of the liquid. Set aside.
- 3. Put the eggs, sunflower oil and sugar in a large bowl and whisk with an electric whisk for about 3 minutes, until the mixture becomes creamy.
- 4. Sift the cinnamon, flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda over the mixture, and fold it in with the coconut, walnuts, carrot and raisins. Spoon into the tin and bake for 45 minutes or until a skewer pushed into the cake’s centre comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin, then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.
- 5. For the icing, beat the cream cheese with the icing sugar and vanilla until smooth and creamy, adding more icing sugar to taste, if needed. Spread over the top and sides of the cake and sprinkle with extra walnuts.
Nutritional info
Per serving: (based on 12) 406kcals, 23g fat (6.5g saturated), 5.3g protein, 43.4g carbs, 27.8g sugar, 0.7g salt