Carrot cake

 I never imagined it would be so traumatic cooking with my 20-year-old sister, newly returned from university in Exeter. It was a titanic struggle. I now feel physically and mentally drained, almost unable to write this post.

Walking along Sharpenhoe Clappers in the sunshine this morning, we had the brainwave to amalgamate our separate carrot cake recipes to create the ultimate carrot cake. This led to the question of what would the ultimate carrot cake would be like. To me, it would be of light yet moist texture with a perhaps some chopped nuts to give a little crunch and mildly spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg. Marigold ardently believes it should be rich and moist almost to the point of soggy, heavily spiced, raisined and nutted. So it was a battle of wills. Not helped by Marigold’s opinion of herself: “I have a fat person’s instincts about cakes…when I don’t follow the recipe it always turns out well”. Although I was forced to concede to a spicy, moist aim, I heroically kept the carrot, spice and nut content to a reasonable level. Inevitably there were casualties such as using dark brown sugar and wholemeal flour.

Surprisingly, I was pleased with the result; it was undeniably a moist, rich carrot cake but it didn’t feel too heavy or sticky. The only issue was that the cake sunk a bit in the middle (as you can see from the photograph) because it wasn’t completely cooked (ha). I should have used to clean skewer method to check instead of the spring-back method. Anyway, I ate a slice of it and I actually enjoyed the gooey middle. However I did cut out the uncooked middle (making the rest into a doughnut shape) and shoved it back in the oven to cook. My sister informs me the way to the get the cake to cook evenly is put it in at a lower temperature – we baked it at 175C, so would now suggest 160C. I am going to tell you what we ended up doing and how to modify it into a light, airier carrot cake.

Ingredients                       

175g dark brown sugar                        (light demerera sugar)

150ml vegetable oil                               (butter)

3 eggs

200g wholemeal flour                            (plain flour)

200g grated carrot

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 tsp cinnamon                                     (1tsp cinnamon)

1 tsp mixed spice                                   (1/2 teaspoon mixed spiced)

100g raisins/sultanas                            (leave out)

100g chopped walnuts/pecans              (leave out)

zest of orange and a lemon

For icing

100g cream cheese

some icing sugar

Whisk the sugar, eggs and oil until sugar is thoroughly mixed.

Stir in the rest of the ingredients.           

Grease baking tin and put mixture in the preheated oven for about 40 minutes and check. Put on a cooling wrack.

Mix the icing sugar into the cream cheese and keep testing until it tastes like icing. Smear on top of cake. Finely chop some walnuts and pecans and decorate the cake.