Baking Chronicles - Carrot Cake

I'm a real try hard baker. When I say that, what I really mean is 'I buy all of the ingredients in hope of an edible, normal shaped, tasty infact, cake'. I'm quite a dreamer, meaning I want to be Nigella Lawson or have an icing sugar range in Waitrose, we all need an achievable goal sometimes.

Despite the flat muffins, the Betty Crocker assisted mix and the pistachio cake that made my dad ill, I've learnt the one cake I'm really truly good at making is a Carrot Cake. There's nothing overly fussy about making it, nor does it contain the spices of unicorns and Jesus. It's a basic recipe I've played about with from Dan Lepard. To find the original recipe, click here!

I call this the only cake my dad truly likes because usually he'll tell me if he doesn't like something. This is a simple cake with lots of nutmeg and cinnamon, cream cheese and yes, real actual carrots. I opt out of using dried fruits because they are food of the grown ups and I personally don't like chewing through wrinkly fruit. I also up the spices in this cake because I've noticed the flavor sometimes disappears halfway through and I also add more because the cake smells only what I envision Christmas to be. I also like to use a vanilla butter cream in the center because think, why would not have vanilla butter cream in a cake?

Let me know if this recipe works for you!

The cake
175g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp ground nutmeg
200g light brown sugar
150ml sunflower oil
2 large eggs 
200g carrots (3 small-ish ones)
75g chopped walnuts (optional)

The middle
200g icing sugar
150g butter (Stork works best)

The top
200g soft cream cheese 
100g unsalted butter 
125g icing sugar

Somehow if you manage to keep chill throughout this, you'll end up with a little something below.

So, firstly...

Gather all your ingredients and realise you gotta stop buying organic because it's still a week till payday.

Combine your flour, baking powder and all the spices - again keep adding till you smell Christmas.

Mix oil, brown sugar and 2 eggs - sorry, not that attractive!

Add grated carrot to the unattractive mix, have a moment's silence for the skin you lost whilst grating.

Put all your ingredients in the bowl, like everything, and mix till you feel like it might pass as bakeable.

Put your mix into two rounded tins, and pretend you didn't spill most of it on the side...like I did.

Bake for about 25 minutes, or as the experts say 'till a clean skewer comes out' but you know...until it's no longer gloopy. You should end up with something like this...hopefully.

Then add a whole lotta love to the middle of the cake and yes, lick the bowl.

If you got really bored after this long process, you can just ice the top of the cake in the morning...like I did. I put a load of almonds and walnuts on top because it looked fancy.

And then finally, attempt to enjoy (if edible) and if not, well at least you did something that involved an oven and sugar!

I hope you enjoyed this somewhat tutorial!

Till next time,

Ellie