Carrot Cake

I decided I needed to do more baking so last night I embarked on making a carrot cake.

So after scouring the web and comparing recipes I picked up what I think is the basics and went from there.

My Recipe:

2 cups grated carrot (I used about 4 medium sized carrots)

3/4 cup sunflower or vegetable oil

1 cup brown or caster sugar

3 eggs

2 cups SR flour or use plain flour and add a tsp of baking powder

1 tsp bi-carb soda

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp of ground nutmeg

1 cup chopped walnuts

Icing

1 220g tub philadelphia cream cheese (use light or normal as you see fit)

1 cup icing sugar

1 lemon

more choped walnuts to decorate.

Mix together the sugar, eggs and oil in one bowl until combined.

Put the flour, bi carb, nutmeg and cinnamon in another bowl, then mix in the wet ingredients.

Once combined add the grated carrot and walnuts.

Put in a cake tin of some description (see more on that below) and bake in a 180 degree oven until cooked (about 30 mins)

Mix the cream cheese, icing sugar, grated lemon rind, and juice of half or whole of the lemon depending on taste and size of the lemon.

Once the cake is cooked leave to cool then ice with the lemon cream cheese frosting

Firstly the result. Well the cake is moist and the icing is good and just the right amount of lemon.

My only really bad comment it might have had a touch too much nutmeg I have already adjusted the above to address this. In my version I used a full teaspoon of nutmeg.

Now my other point. The reason I said in a tin of some description and just until cooked is I've finally figured out why sometime my cakes weren't cooked or cooked to quickly aka burnt.

There's a very complex relationship between how wet your mixture is, the size and shape of the tin and how hot your oven is (and if it's fan forced or not as well!).

A vey wet mixture requires a combination of lower temperature and shallower/broader cake tin. I've mostly been using a loaf style tin and it's too deep for a really wet mixture. In order to be cooked correctly throughout before you start to burn the outside the mix needs to starting to approach a dough like consistency, or else you only need 5-7cm or so deep of mix in the tin, which defeats the purpose of using a loaf tin.

I did use a loaf tin for the above and had to wind the oven right down to about 150-160 and it took nearly a full hour to be cooked. Also for anyone that hasn't already heard the tip you can tell when it's cooked by sticking a skewer into the cake and pulling it out and seeing if anything still sticks to it.

The ideal tin I think for the above would be a 20cm round cake tin, the cake should then be cooked through before the outside starts to go too hard or burnt.

That's my real point I suppose with this post, sure the carrot cake recipe is good and now I know where to find it again. :) I'm sure this is knowledge most of our grandmas know but took me quite a while to figure it out for myself.

Hopefully by releasing it into the world I'll save someone else the hassles and people's cooking will be better.