Scrumptious Carrot Cake Recipe

Today I want to share my favourite ever Carrot Cake recipe! I'm super fussy about Carrot Cake, it's definitely one of my favourites but I'm very picky about how I like it, it must have fruit, it must NEVER have nuts (I'm not a fan of nuts in cake but you could add them to this recipe if you like them) it must have cream cheese frosting, and there must be lots of carrot (or what's the point!) this one was given to me some years ago, I lost it once (eeek! I now keep multiple copies and it's scanned and backed up on my pooter!) I hope you love it as much as I do...

You will need...

250grams / 9oz Wholemeal Flour

175grams / 6oz Muscovado Sugar

175grans / 6oz Brown Sugar

3 Large Eggs

6 fl Ozs (175ml) Sunflower Oil

2 fl Oz (55ml) Soured Cream

2 Teaspoons Vanilla Essence

1 Teaspoon Nutmeg

2 Level Teaspoons Cinnamon

1 teaspoon Bicarbonate of Soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

11 Ozs (300 grams) grated carrots

175 grams / 6 ozs Sultanas

85 grams / 3 Ozs Desiccated Coconut

For the Cream Cheese Frosting

110 grams / 4 Ozs Cream Cheese

50 grams / 2 Ozs Unsalted Butter

50 grams / 2 Ozs Icing Sugar

Juice of half a lemon or lime

To Make (approximately 2 hours)

Preheat the oven to 150c / 300f and lightly grease (or line with greaseproof paper) an 8" baking tin (it should be pretty deep, mine is around 5.5" deep and works great!)

Mix the eggs, oil, vanilla essence and soured cream together

Once combined slowly sieve in the dry ingredients - flour, cinnamon, Bicarbonate of Soda and salt 

(you could do all of this in the food mixer much quicker, I do this by hand as it's quite a dense cake and mine doesn't work great at combining all the ingredients properly - I am waiting patiently for my dream mint green KitchenAid mixer... *sigh*)

Fold the mixture in until well combined before adding the grated carrots, coconut and sultanas

Once everything is mixed well, pour the mixture into your baking tin and bake for around 1 and a half hours - be sure to test the centre with a toothpick to ensure it is properly cooked before removing from the oven and leaving to cool for at least an hour

Frosting...

Once your cake is completely cooled, sieve the icing sugar into a bowl and mix with the softened butter and cream cheese, add the lemon or lime juice and then top your cake and enjoy - preferably with a big mug of earl grey tea *slurp* my fave! (The carrot garnishes I used from the top picture were from Sainsburys)

I hope you enjoy it as much as we all do!

Thank you for dropping by today

Sarah x