Carrot and Walnut Cake

Mum’s birthday just passed so I made her favourite cake, this recipe will help you produce a lovely cake which is great for sharing between the family.

Serves: Around 8
Time: Around 60 mins

Ingredients

250ml Sunflower oil
4 Eggs (fresher the better)
225g Light brown sugar (muscovado)
200g Carrot; grated coarsly
1 Orange juiced and Zest
2 Teaspoons Baking powder
1 Teaspoons Ground ginger
1 Teaspoons Mixed Spice
75g Walnuts, chopped
You can save some more nuts for decoration

Icing Mix

50g Butter, softened, room temp
35g Icing sugar
250g Full fat cream cheese
1/2 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract

Method

1. Start by Pre-heating your oven to a temperature of 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Then start greasing two deep 20cm round sandwich tins and line the bases of the cake tins with baking parchment.

2. Pour in the oil, eggs, and sugar into a large mixing bowl, and then whisk until the mixture is well combined, lighter, and noticeably thickened, you will notice it thickens quite easily so avoid over whisking. Then start folding in the grated carrot into the cake batter, then stir in the flour, baking powder, mixed spice, ginger, chopped walnuts, zest and juice of the orange, stir until evenly blended. You don’t want to see any dry spots in the mix and it should be well combined.

3. Spoon in the cake mixture evenly between the tins, once you have done this put the cakes in the oven and bake for about 35 minutes, or until golden brown, risen, and shrinking away from the sides of the tins. Transfer to a wire rack to cool (it is very important to allow the cake to cool before you start adding icing or decorations.

4. To start the icing put the softened butter, icing sugar, cream cheese and vanilla extract in a bowl and whisk using a hand or electric whisk until smooth and blended. Once you have done this spoon half the icing on one cake (this will be the middle between the two cakes) be generous here as the sponge this is because the cake will absorb the icing and become dry in the middle if there is not enough icing. Put the remaining on top of the other cake and sandwich both cakes together

5. Decorate however you feel like I used nuts, orange icing and mint to get the result I wanted.