Best ever carrot cake

Edward: I'm afraid of heights.
Vivian: You are? So how come you rented the penthouse?
Edward: It's the best.

(From Pretty Woman, 1990, Touchstone Pictures, screenplay by JF Lawton)

Carrot Cake - uniced
Originally uploaded by Cakelaw

This is the Best Ever Carrot Cake. No really - I am not trying to be egotistical or facetious. The title of the Kate McGhie recipe used to make this cake, from p316 of Cook, is Best Ever Carrot Cake. And you know what - she is right!

This carrot cake is fantastic. It is moist and flavoursome, and quite frankly, I am glad that I took it to work and cut it into 16 slices and shared it with my colleagues, because by gum, I could have scoffed the lot myself. Really!

I made carrot cake at the request of one of my colleagues, Matt. I actually prefer it when I get requests, because I know that at least someone will be happy with my choice of baked goods for the week. There is a plethora of carrot cake recipes to choose from, but when Kate boasted that this one was the best, I pushed aside my cynicism and decided to give it a burl. I was not sorry - although I may have been a little sorry for myself when I was grating the 300g of carrot required for this recipe.

As well as containing carrot (after all, it is a carrot cake!), this cake is bursting with nuts (I used walnuts instead of the pecans called for by the recipe) and sultanas. To finish it off, the cake was frosted with cream cheese frosting flavoured with orange zest and juice - but I thought the photo of the uniced cake cooling on a wire rack was far more interesting.

I managed not to injure myself while grating carrots, chopping nuts and zesting an orange for this cake. However, I managed to slice into myself while cutting up the cake for degustation at work. Ah well, all in the life of a keen cook.

If you are keen to try this cake, let me know. It is seriously delicious - in fact, "it's the best"!