Carrot Cake recipes are a good standby and the biggest upside is that they can’t collapse as a sponge cake can often do! Also the way to use up those carrots and bananas. Yes its always best to use fresh carrots but I hate to waste :-)
Ingredients
Carrot Cake
- 50ml Sunflower oil (plus extra for greasing)
- 250g Self-raising wholemeal flour (wholemeal is best but any flour will work – but if you use GF flour remember to add 1tsp xantham gum and a little extra milk because GF flour is liquid hungry!)
- 2 tsp Baking powder
- 150g light brown sugar (dark will work or even white sugar if it’s all you have to hand)
- 60g Walnuts (chopped) If you have nut allergies to cater for substitute with sultanas or dried cranberries.
- 125g Grated Carrot
- 2 ripe Bananas (riper the better!)
- 2 Free Range eggs
- 1 tbsp Milk (more if using GF flour)
Cream cheese topping (optional!!!)
- 250g Low calorie cream cheese
- 125gms icing sugar
- 100 g butter
- Lemon juice
- Walnuts (chopped)
NOTE: this may be controversial for some but I personally find cheese frosting on carrot cakes too sickly and always scrape it off. If you want to make your carrot cake special then serve it with a tablespoon of cream or crème fraiche or even ice-cream.
Method
- Lightly grease an 18cm (7 inch) cake tin and line the bottom with baking parchment.
- Combine all the cake ingredients in a large bowl. Mix well until thoroughly blended. Turn into the prepared cake tin and level the surface.
- Bake in a preheated oven at 180°C (fan 170°C, gas mark 4) for about 50 minutes until the cake is well risen, firm to the touch, and beginning to shrink away from the side of the tin.
- Leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes. Turn out on to a wire cooling rack, peel off the lining paper and leave to cool completely.
To make the topping
- Cream sugar and butter
- Mix in cream cheese
- Spread on top of the cake and sprinkle the walnuts over the top.
- Store in the refrigerator until ready to serve.
illo used is a stock photo