Sunday 17 June 2012

Carrot Cake with Vanilla Cream Cheese Icing


A quick Google search, during my lunch break at work, informs me that carrot cake has its origins in Medieval times. Perhaps this makes it the first vegetable to be used in sweet cookery, though I have no other basis for making this claim. Now you can find recipes for allsorts of desserts using vegetables: beetroot brownies; courgetter lemon sorbet... I forget what else. Oh, rhubarb (maybe that predates carrots).



That ever reliable source of information, Wikipedia, says that carrot cake was voted as the UK's favourite cake in 2011. I kind of find that hard to believe. Surely chocolate cake reigns supreme. Unfortunately, there's no reference cited for this nugget of (false?) information. I'm going to just throw this out there... Chocoate Cake is the UK's Favourite Cake...

...maybe.

Regardless, my lunch break is fast approaching its end.


Carrot Cake with Vanilla Cream Cheese Icing


The easiest way to make this cake is in a food processor, but if you're doing it by hand make sure you thoroughly mix all the ingredients. 


For the cake

250g butter, salted
250g soft brown sugar
4 medium eggs, separated
200g self raising flour
1tsp baking powder
100g ground almonds
100g walnuts, roughly chopped plus extra for decoration
1/2tsp ground nutmeg
1/2tsp ground cinnamon
250g carrots, grated
Pinch of salt

For the icing


350g cream cheese
100g icing sugar
1tsp vanilla extract


Preheat oven 180°C/350°F/Gas 4


Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy then beat in the egg yolks one at a time. Mix half the flour in, then add the rest and the baking powder. Next, separately mix in the almonds, walnuts, spices and carrots. 


Gently spoon into two greased loaf tins and bake in the oven for 50 minutes, or until you can put a skewer in for 5 seconds and pull it out clean. Allow to cool on a wire rack.


For the icing, mix all the ingredients together and spread over the top of the cakes. Decorate with walnuts.

2 comments:

  1. Thus I am hunting for good low calorie low (real) glucose desserts to make
    for my gf on valentines. She wants to eat healthier thus i gotta find something thats healthy haha.

    . Any suggestions?.
    Feel free to surf my web blog ; Noemi Belmonte @ http://lowfatdessertrecipes.org/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Personally, I don't think desserts are the place to try and reduce calories, or sugar, or fat content. I'd rather reduce it somewhere else in the meal or have a small portion.
    However, you could try a chocolate mousse. Egg whites are extremely low in calories and fat and if you use a quality dark chocolate you won't need so much.

    ReplyDelete