Happy birthday Matt & Julien - Carrot Cake

While we were away on Christmas vacation, our CE "twins", Matt and Julien, celebrated their respective birthdays on 29 December. So that they did not miss out on cake just because their birthdays fall during Christmas vacation, I made them a carrot cake on the same day as Susie and Racquel's pina colada cake and made a special trip to take it in (as I was on secondment all this week).

Matt's favourite cake is carrot cake, so I made carrot cake for both of them. As it was late at night and I didn't want to have to dig through recipe books, I pulled out my reliable The Cook's Companion by Stephanie Alexander, which contains recipes in in order of key ingredient, and lo, under "Carrots", she had a recipe for "simple carrot cake".

I substituted cashews for walnuts in the recipe, as that was what I had on hand. Unfortunately, the cake turned out a little flat because I used a larger tin than recommended, so I sliced it in half and filled it with cream cheese frosting to plump it up a bit. While I didn't get to taste the cake, the frosting was to die for (yep - I licked the bowl :)). The cake is dead easy to make, so if you are feeling a little world weary but need to whip up a cake, this recipe is a winner.

To make this cake, you will need:

125g self-raising flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2/3 cup oil
2 lightly beaten eggs
2 cups grated carrot (~ 2 large carrots)
60g chopped walnuts

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius, and grease and line an 18cm cake tin.

Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Add the oil and eggs, and beat with an electric mixer for around one minute. Stir in the carrot and chopped nuts, then spoon the batter into the prepared tin and bake for one hour.

.Remove the cake from the oven and cool it completely in the tin before turning out.

To make the cream cheese frosting (enough for the top of the cake only), beat together 60g cream cheese, 125g icing sugar and 30g butter. Add 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence, then ice the top of the cake. This frosting is delicious, and not at all runny like the other cream cheese frostings that I have made to date.

Hope you had a great birthday guys!