Carrot Cake Recipe

I have a wonderful carrot cake recipe that I would love to share with you. Everyone that has tasted my carrot cake has absolutely loved it and I have even received orders for this cake…

• Ingredients:

For the Cake

• 180ml oil (sunflour or canola)
• 180ml brown sugar
• 3 eggs (free range)
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 100g walnuts
• 240ml grated carrots (more is fine)
• 180ml flour
• 1tsp baking powder
• 1tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1tsp cinnamon
• 1tsp nutmeg
• 1tsp cloves
• pinch of salt

For the Icing

• 1 tub soft cream cheese (woolworths one is the best)
• 120g butter (I use woodenspoon butter)
• 2 tsps lemon juice
• 240ml icing sugar
• walnuts to garnish

To bake:

• Pre-heat oven at 180*C.
• Grease and line two round cake tins.
• Wash and peel the carrots then coarsly grate.
• Chop the walnuts.
• Mix the oil, sugar, eggs and vanilla essence. Beat well.
• Add the carrots and the walnuts to the mixture. Then through a sieve add the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and salt.
• Mix well and then pour equally into the tins.
• Bake for 30-35 mins, until the cakes spring back when pressed and a skewer comes out clean.
• Cool completely on a wire rack before icing.

To ice:

• Beat the butter and sugar until smooth.
• Add the cream cheese and lemon juice to the butter and sugar and mix together. Be careful not to beat too much as it may start to seperate.
• Spread the icing over the top of one of the cakes and sandwich the second one on top.
• Spread the remaining icing over the top of the cake and decorate with walnuts.
• Enjoy!

Photo found on Flickr here…

Racing Car Cake

Last week a friend of ours, who lives in the UK, asked me to make a cake for his nephew here in SA.

He wanted a ‘Pimp my Ride’ type of racing car.

I used to bake kids birthday cakes for extra money, but haven’t for about a year now, so I am a little out of practice. I spent the whole of Friday night on the cake and went to bed really late. It could have been better, but a good effort…

Here are some photos… (taken at night – so not the best)