• 

What’s more Autumnal than a delicately spiced, aromatic carrot cake. You’re also packing all the carrot in on the sly for the kids which is an added bonus! Full of cinnamon and mixed spice this cake smells utterly divine when cooking. I don’t mean to blow my own trumpet but I’m over the moon with myself! Ive never made a carrot cake before and my intuition with ingredients worked perfectly. It’s hands down one of the most delicious cakes I’ve ever made.

I can’t wait to laze about with a slice of this, snuggled under a throw with a stack of cookery books the size of mount crumpet. Does anyone else have wild days like this?!

Ingredients

175g vegetable oil

175g self raising flour

140g dark muscovado sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

zest of an orange

145g carrots – peeled and grated

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 teaspoon mixed spice

3 eggs

Cream Cheese Icing

130g icing sugar

200g cream cheese – I used Philadelphia

teaspoon fresh orange juice

2 tablespoons unsalted pistachios chopped to top the cake

Method

Pre heat your oven to 180C / 160C fan

Line and grease two 8 inch cake tins.

Add all of your ingredients for the cake into the mixing bowl ( except the carrots and the topping ingredients).

Once you’ve mixed your ingredients together in the bowl, add your grated carrots and fold gently to ensure combined. The grating of the carrots is not a thrill but trust me it will be worth it when you taste the end result.

Now transfer the mixture evenly to each cake tin and place in the centre of your oven for approximately 30 minutes.

When the cakes look fully baked and are springy to the touch place them on a wire rack to cool.

While they are cooling mix up your cream cheese icing and once they are fully cooled spread this all over one, sandwich the other on top and, then spread the lovely cream cheese icing all over the top. Quickly before the icing dries sprinkle over your pistachios.