Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Icing

I love carrot cake and have been searching for a recipe to rival the one I cannot resist in the Bondi organic store Earth Food - a local woman makes it and it is delectable. This recipe is the perfect carrot cake recipe and is saving me money. The secret must be whipping the egg mixture for a minimum of 7 minutes, as the texture is beautiful, light and moist – so do not skip this step. The best carrot cake recipe I have cooked and I have tried many now! Icing has right amount of sweetness too. When you read below where it is from it might explain why it works!

"This carrot cake recipe came from England - it was requested from a chef at a glitzy restaurant in London. It arrived weeks later in the post with a bill for $300!!
Here it is...definitely one to be shared"– Melody Davidson-Black.

  
Pictured: Carrot Cake

1 cup sugar
1 cup mild olive oil (or grapeseed/sunflower oil)
3 eggs
1½ cups plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp cinnamon or allspice
1½ tsp baking powder
Pinch salt
2 cups grated carrot
½ cup chopped walnuts
½ cup sultanas (optional)

Frosting/Icing
250g cream cheese
50g butter
2 tsp vanilla
½ - ¾ cup icing sugar

Or try the decadent cream cheese icing whipped with thickened cream in the Chocolate and Guinness cake recipe.

Preheat oven to 150°C. Grease and line a 23 - 25cm round srping form cake tin.

Beat sugar, oil and eggs for 7 minutes.
Sift dry ingredients and then stir into the mixture.
Fold in the carrot and walnuts.
Bake 45 – 50 minutes.

Beat frosting/icing ingredients until smooth and ice cake, including sides.

Serves 8 – 10

Baking Powder

Baking powder is a raising agent containing bicarbonate of soda and tartaric acid. To absorb moisture in storage it also has a dried starch or flour. The way it works to rise cakes, biscuits and breads, is that when it is warmed and becomes moist it gives off carbon dioxide. It does have a used by date - so make sure to check this if a recipe fails. It's ideal for coeliac sufferers to make their own when the gluten-free variety of this raising agent cannot be found.

15ml/1tbsp bicarbonate of soda

30ml/2tbsp cream of tartar

Combine exactly, as the wrong combination can upset a rescipe's balance.

Makes 3 tbsp

TasteTip - 'Allspice' is the English name of the dried, unripe berry from a tropical American tree - Pimenta dioica. It has a flavour hinting of cloves, black pepper, nutmeg and cinnamon. Spanish explorers named them 'pimento' (peppercorn) in the 16th century as they likened them to black pepper.