The Sneaky Magpie

I have been searching for the perfect carrot cake recipe for a very long time. An ideal carrot cake would be something like the individual cakes from Le Pain Quotidien, dark, moist and full of raisins and walnuts. I don’t like creamy, puffy sponge cakes, I can’t understand cupcakes and muffins, I dislike scones. But give me a moist, fruity cake, preferably made with almonds instead of flour and I am in heaven.

Tommy recommended the recipe from Rose’s Bakery cookbook Breakfast, Lunch, Tea so I used it as my base and tweaked it slightly, I also cross referenced it with my friend Kim’s recipe whose cake is delicious. This is what I came up with.

Carrot cake recipe:

7 large carrots, grated

4 eggs

125g caster sugar

100g muscovado sugar

300ml vegetable oil

150g flour

150g ground almonds

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp all spice

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tbs baking soda

1/2 tbs salt

100g walnuts

100g raisins

Icing:

200g cream cheese

75g butter

30g icing sugar

juice of half a lemon

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Cream eggs, sugar and oil. In a separate bowl mix all the dry ingredients. Combine both and add grated carrots. Butter your baking tin and pour the batter in. Bake for about 1h or until the knife comes out clean.

Baking tip: I always keep butter wrappers in the fridge and use them to prepare baking tins.

Once the cake is baked, cool it well and prepare the icing by creaming the butter and cream cheese and adding the icing sugar and lemon juice till you have the perfect taste and consistency. Ice your cake, I have sliced it in half and put a layer of the icing in between but it is optional. If you fancy individual cakes, muffin tins are the best.

The cake is moist, fragrant and delicious, not the LPQ cake yet but close enough. I just need to keep adjusting the recipe and hopefully one day I will get there.