When I was little my mum and I would sometimes make a huge loaf of what was essentially healthy carrot cake: with ground almonds instead of flour, brown sugar, orange juice and a sizable grating of my tiny knuckles for good measure. Adds flavour.
It was a lovely, dense cake that was incredibly tasty but I decided not to use this recipe last weekend. Oh no. You see, my mother is some sort of Belfast half-hippy – shops at Holland & Barratt a lot but doesn’t wearing hemp shoes or anything. What she is totally AGAINST though, is sugar. Which is odd considering how much chocolate she eats. We have a huge bag of Xylitol sitting in the cupboard which was, apparently, going to REVOLUTIONISE our diet. It didn’t and it makes cupcakes go all weird. So there it sits, unused, while I insist on throwing aside the recipes of my childhood and going mad with food colouring and additives and the Devil’s granules.Also my cake had icing.
You need:
- 700g bag of carrots
- 270ish grams of caster sugar
- 3 medium eggs
- 1½ teaspoons of vanilla essence
- 2 tablespoons of tasteless oil like nut or sunflower
- 180g of plain white flour
- 3 teaspoons of baking powder
- 1½ teaspoons of ginger
- Little pinch of nutmeg
- 2 teaspoons of cinnamon
- Pinch of salt
- Around two handfuls of chopped walnuts (optional)
Grate the carrots. All of them. Using the really small holes on your grater you only really ever use for Parmesan. This takes forever. FOREVER. And your hand will cramp. And you’ll wonder why you decided to do this. And you’ll hate me. And your fingers will go orange. But just do it. Try and squeeze out half of the juice with kitchen roll – the carrots will lose about half their weight but this means your cake will still be moist without being soggy.
Gross
Grease your cake tin(s) with butter and then coat this in flour, shaking out the excess, to line it. Proper people who plan things should also buy some grease proof paper and line the bottom. I didn’t, which was fine, but touch and go for the most part. Also heat up the oven to about 150ºc.
With an electric whisk (unless you’re a masochist) beat the eggs and the sugar together for a few minutes until the mixture is nice and pale and has doubled in size. Add the vanilla essence and whisk in.
Mix up all the dry ingredients so everything is evenly spread through the flour and then sift it in to the eggs and sugar, folding it in.
Add the carrots, walnuts, if you fancy, and the oil and fold it in. It looks like cat sick, I know. I’m sorry.
If you have two cake tins divide the mixture between them or just half into one and leave the rest of the mixture to sit. Stick it in the oven for about 55 minutes to an hour, until the top is nice and golden. You’ll know it’s done when you stick a skewer into the cake and it comes out clean.
- 65g unsalted butter – leave it out of the fridge so it’s very soft and try and chop it up a bit
- 240g icing sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
- 100ish grams of cream cheese
Using your magic electric whisk beat this all together until it looks right. There will be HUGE clouds of icing sugar everywhere. Pretend your Pablo Escobar.
sarahduggers 
It was gorgeous.