Carrot Cake Recipe and Winners

This is a recipe I am going to try to convince you to make based entirely on other people's opinions!

I made it. But I didn't taste it - not even the batter! 

Why, you might ask? 

Let's just say I'm not a big nut fan and leave it at that.

I opted for a carrot cake because its my mum's favourite...and Friday was her birthday.

I made up for this incredible sacrifice not being able to eat any by making myself one of my crustless milk tarts, the Oreo chocolate fondants and a batch of date balls using my new and improved recipe with no sugar but added cinnamon! So I won't be fading away anytime soon. 

Friday started out treating mum at the spa at The Arabella. Then we moved on to join a few great friends for lunch and wine tasting at the breathtakingly lovely La Vierge.

Then home to the farm for a cup of tea and carrot cake (or 3 puddings for me!).

For the cake you will need:

2 1/4 C flour,

1 and 1/2 t baking powder,

1 t bicarb of soda,

1 generous t ground cinnamon,

1/4 t ground ginger,

1/4 t ground nutmeg,

pinch salt,

4 eggs,

2 and 1/3 C light brown sugar,

1 C oil (I used olive oil from our farm),

1/2 C buttermilk (I didn't have any on hand so substituted 1/2 C milk with 1 t lemon juice),

2 t vanilla,

1/2 C crushed pineapple, drained,

500g coarsely grated carrots,

200g toasted chopped walnuts or pecans,

1 C raisins

For the frosting:

250g Philadelphia cream cheese block,

100g butter,

1 C icing sugar,

1 T lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 175ºC.

Mix the flour, baking powder, bicarb, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and salt in a bowl.

Separately, combine the eggs, sugar, oil, buttermilk, vanilla and pineapple.

Add the dry mix to the egg mix and combine.

Add the carrots, pecans and raisins and mix until well incorporated.

Pour your batter into 2 buttered spring form cake tins and bake for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Allow the cakes to cool completely before removing them from the pans.

In the meanwhile, beat together the cream cheese, butter, sugar and lemon juice for the frosting.

Spread a layer of frosting on top of your base cake. Put the second cake on top and cover both with the remainder of your frosting.

Next time (although I'm not too convinced there will be a next time because not eating this cake has been bad for my waistline!) I would make double the amount of frosting because that's the kind of girl I am that's the best part of any cake!

Apparently this cake is delicious, light, moist, crunchy, nutty and delicious (oh, did I mention that already?!).

But don't take my word for it, make one for yourself and let me know.

View from the Arabella Spa

Thanks to everyone for your comments on the new buttons. The 3 winners are:

Haddie,

Oops-Lah,

Darlene Jacolik

If you aren't one of our lucky winners but still want to own our newest designs or even the older classics, our full catalogue is online. Let us know where you are and we'll put you in touch with your nearest stockist...or better yet, why not ask your local yarn store to stock Incomparable buttons if they don't already.