THE Carrot Cake

Now this recipe is my favourite. Use with caution! It may lead to endless baking and constant requests. It's also my favourite because it's the first recipe I would properly call mine. This is my carrot cake (wow that feels nice to say!) Now this is a plain carrot cake, you can add walnuts but I can't be dealing with that in my cake! So add nuts if you want it's just not really my style.

Ingredients:

250g Carrots (Peeled and chopped ends)
150g Margarine
200g Self-raising Flour
200g Brown demerara sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 tsp Salt
2 tsp Ground cinnamon
2 tsp Baking Powder
(2 tbs Milk if the mixture is really stiff)

Method:

1. Preheat Oven to 180°c.

2. Grate the carrots

3. Heat the margarine in a saucepan till melted then add it to the sugar. Beat well until it's combined and a smooth (as it can be) texture.

4. Add beaten eggs and the carrot to the mixture and whisk to get some air in to the mixture.

5. Combine the dry ingredients together and add them a little add a time to the mixture. Folding the flour in and no trying to overwork the mixture.

6. Spoon the mixture either in to 12-18 cupcake cases, 8 mini loaf cases, a loaf tin or a cake tin. This mixture is really great and adjusts well for all forms.

7. Bake for 18 minutes (cupcakes) 25 minutes (mini-loaf) and 25-35 depending on how big the tins are, I would fetch them out the oven when they look like they're starting to go a darker brown.

8. Icing: I know most carrot cakes have cream cheese frosting but no one close to me is a fan so I decided that cinnamon butter icing was a winner:

75g Butter
175g Icing Sugar
1 tsp Ground cinnamon

Beat all the ingredients together until you get a smooth icing, then pipe on to your cakes and decorate! I've made sugar icing carrots to decorate with before and they look very sweet (I think you can also buy these on eBay). I've also included different icing ideas in the pictures below - these are PERFECT for Halloween because of their colour!

- Emma xxx