Use your sweet home grown carrots to make this rich cake. The flower in the image above is the beautiful carrot flower. I hope you enjoy this cake.

Carrot Cake

Ingredients

Carrot cake:

• 200 g finely grated raw carrots
• 4 eggs, lightly beaten
• 2 cups plain flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 200 g soft light brown sugar
• 1 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp mixed spice
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup milk
• juice of half an orange
• 1 teaspoon orange zest
• 75 g pecans or walnuts, chopped
• 100 g raisins or sultanas

Icing:

• 200 g cream cheese
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• 80 g icing sugar

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 180 C
2. Soak raisins in the juice of half an orange
3. Sift the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and mixed spice into a large bowl
4. In a large bowl whisk the eggs then add the sugar and combine well
5. Add oil, milk  and vanilla extract
6. Whisk well to thoroughly combine
7. Fold in the carrots, chopped walnuts and raisins and orange juice
8. Lightly butter and line a deep loaf pan and pour mixture in
9. You can decorate the top with crumbled nuts or half pecans or walnuts if you wish
10. Bake for 50 mins or until a skewer comes out cleanly
11. Let stand for a few minutes before inverting onto a rack
12. To make icing, beat the cream cheese, lemon juice and sugar together and ice the cake with a palette knife dipped in hot water

Variation

Spoon the mixture into a muffin tray for individual carrot cake muffins with half a pecan on top.