Carrot Cake with Frosting

A Three Tier Carrot Cake spiced with Nutmeg, Cinnamon and Ginger

adapted from the Humming Bird Bakery Cookbook.

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You will need:

For the Cake Mix

300g soft light brown sugar

3 eggs (or egg replacer for vegan cake)

300ml of sunflower oil

300g plain flour

1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda

1 teaspoon of baking power

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Quarter teaspoon vanilla extract

Half teaspoon of ground nutmeg

Quarter teaspoon ground ginger

Half teaspoon of salt

300g carrot grated

100g shelled walnuts

For the Frosting
600g icing sugar

100g unsalted butter, room temperature (or soya margarine for vegans)

250g of cream cheese (or 250g of soft tofu)

Applicances
Three 20cm cake tins
Greaseproof paper
Electric whisk
Oven...
Sieve

Weighing scales

Grater

Wooden Spoon

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 170C / Gas mark 3

2. Put the sugar, eggs and oil into a large mixing bowl. Use the hand held electric whisk and beat until all the ingredients have combined together. The resultant mixture should be pale brown and smooth.

3. Sieve in the plain flour slowly and add all the spices and baking powder/bicarb of soda and vanilla extract. Whisk this together until all mixed in well. Take cake initally, the flour has a tendancy to get all over the kitchen!

4. Stir in the grated carrots and chopped walnuts with a wooden spoon until evenly distributed

5. Pour the mixture into all the cake tins and spread out evenly with a palette knife.

6. Put your tins into the oven and bake for 20 - 25 minutes. I found mine took 25 minutes. You can test if they are done because they should be light and "bouncy" to the touch.

Another top tip - stick a knife in the centre of the cake, the knife should come out clean. If there is still any cake mix on the knife put the cake back in the oven.

7. Leave the cakes to cool for a few minutes. Then gently take the cakes out of the tins, remove the greasproof paper and place the cakes on a cooling tray.

8. Time to make the frosting - Beat the icing sugar and butter together with an electric whisk. This can be tricky, I had icing sugar all over the place, including me! I found that rubbing the butter in with the icing sugar was better to get an even distribution. Next - tip in the cream cheese / soft tofu into the mix. Use the whisk to blend the mixture all together. The consistency should be nice and light and fluffy. Continue to whisk for 5 minutes.

9. Decorate! - Take one cake and place on your cake stand/plate. Using a warm palette knife take approximately a quarter of the frosting mix and spread over the cake. Take the second cake and place gently on top. Spread another quarter of the frosting over this layer. Finally place the last cake ontop. Cover the top of the cake with more frosting, and place around the sides.

10. Finely chop some walnuts and spread over the top of the cake.

The alterations I made was to add some nutmeg to spice it up some more. I reduced the amount of ginger. You could try adding pecans to replace the walnuts.

Top Tip 1- How to line a cake tin!

I place the cake tin on the greaseproof paper and draw around with a pencil. Cut out with scissors. Next cut out a strip of paper the depth of the tin. Use some margarine to grease the tin. Then "stick" the circle of paper on the bottom and the strip of paper around the inside of the tin.

Top Tip 2 - Make sure the cakes are fully cool before frosting them!!

As an alteration, this recipie also translates well into cupcakes. Make the mix as usually but spoon into cupcake cakes. They can be baked for 20 - 25 minutes. Once cooled, spoon over the frosting and top with half a walnut.