Carrot Cake, Country Show Style

Carrot cake is always a popular choice, and there are many different ways to make it.  When one of the sales team at work challenged me to make carrot cake, I had plenty of recipe choices.  Ultimately, I chose a recipe by 80+ year old Heather Henry from The Country Show Cookbook.  The attraction of this recipe is that it contains glace ginger - yum!

I was pleased with the resulting cake, which comprises a single layer loaf cake iced with cream cheese frosting.  Here's a peek inside:

Have I piqued your interest to make this cake?  If so, you will need:

Cake:

1 cup self raising flour

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup brown sugar

1 1/2 cups grated carrot

1/2 cup sultanas (I used raisins)

1/2 cup chopped glace ginger

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

2 eggs, lightly beaten

2/3 cup vegetable oil (I used canola oil, recipe used sunflower oil)

Frosting:

115g cream cheese

225g icing sugar

(Recipe also added 28g butter and 1 teaspoon vanilla to the icing - I skipped them)

walnuts to decorate

Preheat your oven to 160 degrees Celsius.  Grease a 15cm x 25cm loaf tin, then line the base with baking paper and grease the baking paper.

Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and cinnamon into the bowl of an electric mixer, then mix in the sugar, carrot, sultanas, ginger and walnuts by hand.    

In a small jug, whisk together the eggs and the oil, then pour into the flour mixture and beat with an electric mixer on medium speed for 5 minutes.  (I did this by hand for a shorter period of time, and everything turned out fine.)

Pour the batter into the prepared loaf tin and bake for 55 minutes or until cooked through.  Remove the cake from the oven and cool it in the tin for 10 minutes for turning it out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Once the cake is cool, mix the icing ingredients together in a small bowl, then spread the icing over the top of the cake with a metal spatula.  Decorate the top of the cake with walnuts.

Eat!