Autumn Spiced Carrot Cake

A perfectly spiced carrot cake with fruit and nuts, with a generous amount of smooth cream cheese icing!

Serves 30

Ingredients

Carrot Cake:

• 550g self raising flour

• 2 tsp baking powder

• 2 tsp ground cinnamon

• 2 tsp mixed spiced

• 1/2 ground ginger

• Zest 1 lemon

• 550g soft brown sugar

• 150g chopped walnuts (or pecans)

• 150g raisins

• 600g grated carrot

• 6 large eggs (beaten)

• 370ml sunflower oil

Cream Cheese Icing:

• 200g butter (room temperature)

• 400g full fat cream cheese

• 1300g icing sugar

Decoration:

• Blackberries

• Dried orange slices

• Rosemary sprigs

• Star anise

• Pecan nuts

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Method

Carrot Cake:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 160 C (fan) and grease and line two 8inch cake tins and two 6 inch cake tins.

2. In a large bowl mix the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, mixed spice and ginger.

3. Add the lemon zest, sugar, walnuts, raisins and grated carrot and mix thoroughly.

4. Add the beaten eggs and oil and mix until fully combined.

5. Divide the mixture evenly between the cake tins and bake for 30 minutes.

6. Once removed from the oven, leave them to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before removing and leaving them to cool fully on a wire rack.

Cream Cheese Icing:

1. 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.

Assembly:

1. ​Level the cakes with a sharp serrated knife and sandwich the cakes with a layer of icing.

2. 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!

3. Transfer the remaining icing into a piping bag fitted with a round nozzle.

4. Carefully pipe blobs of icing vertically down edges of the 8 inch cake, and using a palette knife, spread the icing out in one direction from the middle of the blobs. Pipe more vertical blobs on top of this spread out icing, and continue the whole way around the cake.

5. Repeat this technique on top of the cake in a concentric pattern starting from the outside, working towards the middle, then place the 6 inch cake on top and repeat the same method.

6. Decorate with the autumnal fruit and nuts.

   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 is part of a paid partnership with Salter UK.

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