Carrot Cake

Hello

안녕하세요 

(Annyeonghaseyo)

こんにちは 

(Konnichiwa)

你好

(Ni Hao)

I've been wanting to attempt to bake a carrot cake for a while now, originally I wasn't a fan of carrot cake but as I've got older, I've really come to enjoy it, so I decided to attempt to bake my own carrot cake. I'm a fan of The Great British Bake Off, so when I saw a recipe from Paul Hollywood, I thought I'd give it a go.

If you would also like to follow his recipe, I'll link it at the end of my post.

Lets get baking!

Ingredients:

155 ml sunflower oil

230 g self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

1.5 tsp ground cinnamon

0.5 tsp mixed spice

0.5 tsp ground ginger

230 g light brown muscovado sugar

Finely grated zest of 1 satsuma

100 g pecans, halved

260 g carrots, grated 

3 medium free range eggs, beaten

50 g butter

200 g full fat cream cheese

100 g icing sugar

Finely grated zest of 1 orange 

Start off by pre-heating your oven to 180C/160CFan/Gas 4, and grease an 18 cm loose-bottomed round cake tin and line the base with baking parchment.

Next sift the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ground ginger and mixed spice into a large bowl.

Next add the sugar, zest, pecans and grated carrots, stir well until combined.

Next stir in the beaten eggs and oil, then mix well.

Pour the cake mixture into the prepared cake tin and bake in the oven for 1 hour or until a skewer comes out clean.

Transfer the cake to a cooling rack, leave in the tin for 5 minutes, then turn out and leave to cool completely.

For the icing, beat the butter in a large bowl with a hand mixer until really soft.

Next add the cream cheese and beat again until well mixed.

Next sift over the icing sugar, add the orange zest and eat until smooth. If not using straight away store, covered in the fridge until needed.

Carefully cut your cake in half, then spread half of the icing between the cake layers and the other half on the top of the cake. Then you're ready to cut and serve.

I pretty much ate all this carrot cake to myself as Skye wasn't a fan of it, I didn't used to like carrot cake but it's only been in recent months that I've come to enjoy it. The only thing I would change myself about this recipe is making the pecans smaller, instead of halving them. I also felt that my icing was too runny, so I think next time I will try using Philadelphia like the recipe recommends to see if it changes the consistency of the end product. I'll definitely try baking this carrot cake again, it was such a nice moist cake.

If you would like to follow Paul Hollywood's recipe including all the trimmings then head to Paul Hollywood's Ultimate Carrot Cake.

See you soon!

안녕

(Annyeong)

さようなら

(Sayonara)

再见

(ZaiJian)

Bye