Ultimate Carrot Cake
A perfectly spiced carrot cake with fruit and nuts, with a generous amount of smooth cream cheese icing, topped with fondant carrots!
Serves 12-15
Ingredients
275g self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp mixed spiced
1/2 ground ginger
275g soft brown sugar
Zest of half an orange
75g chopped walnuts (or pecans)
75g raisins
300g grated carrot
3 large eggs (beaten)
185ml sunflower oil
Cream Cheese Icing:
100g butter (room temperature)
200g full fat cream cheese
650g icing sugar
Decoration:
50g white fondant or modelling paste
30g chopped pistachios
Orange food colouring
Edible flowers
Method
Carrot Cake:
Pre-heat the oven to 160 C (fan) and grease and line two 8inch cake tins.
In a large bowl mix the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, mixed spice and ginger.
Add the sugar, orange zest, walnuts, raisins and grated carrot and mix thoroughly.
Add the beaten eggs and oil and mix until fully combined.
Divide the mixture evenly between the two cake tins and bake for 30 minutes.
Once removed from the oven, leave them to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before removing and leaving them to cool fully on a wire rack.
Cream Cheese Icing:
Beat the cream cheese and butter together and slowly add the icing sugar, whisking until smooth. If the icing is still too runny, add a little more icing sugar. It should be thick enough to pipe and hold it's shape.
Fondant Carrots:
Add a small amount of orange food colouring to the fondant and knead until evenly coloured, adding more if necessary to get the desired colour.
Take a small pinch of fondant and model it into the shape of a carrot.
Use a knife to carefully add texture to the carrot and use a chopped pistachio for the carrot tops.
Assembly:
Level the cakes with a sharp serrated knife and sandwich the cakes with a layer of icing.
Crumb coat the cake with a thin layer of icing, scraping off any excess and then place the cake in the fridge for 20-30 minutes to firm up. This makes decorating the cake so much easier!
Transfer the remaining icing into a piping bag fitted with a round nozzle.
Carefully pipe 3 vertical blobs, and using a palette knife, spread the icing out in one direction from the middle of the blobs. Pipe another 3 vertical blobs on top of this spread out icing, and continue the whole way around the cake.
Repeat this technique on top of the cake in a concentric patter starting from the outside, working towards the middle.
Decorate with chopped pistachios, your fondant carrots and some edible flowers (or however you like!)
Enjoy!
Head to my Instagram @alice.fevronia for a video on how to make and decorate this cake. Please tag me if you give it a go as I would love to see!
This recipe was part of a paid partnership with Bart Ingredients.
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