Carrot Cake

AND WE'RE BACK!!!!

YES!!! Apologies, it has been a while. We have been away on holidays, and had gotten back to work, and that pretty much explains everything!

It had been a Christmas holiday, which included a lot of eating, a big wedding, drinking, eating, messing around, eating, sweating due to wonderful humid tropical weather, eating, and oh did i say eating? Yes there was a lot of eating lovely wonderful Filipino food.

Anyway (wipes dribble) this post is NOT about Filipino food, but about a carrot cake that was a huge hit among colleagues - I thought I'd write it down before I forget how I made it. Only because there is a high probability of me forgetting about this compared to memories of our Christmas holiday.

This carrot cake was conceived because I found myself in possession of several carrots that have been in the fridge for 2 weeks. By several carrots I mean more than 1 kg. And no I don't think two weeks mean these carrots have gone stale but they might not be very nice eaten fresh.  And so I retrieved my handy baking bible and found a recipe for a very moist carrot cake. 

This is my version of this recipe.

The Recipe for the Very Moist and Very Tasty Carrot Cake

2 cups plain flour

2 tsps bicarb

2 tsps baking powder

2 tsps ground cinnamon

a couple of good handfuls of almonds (or 1 cup of slivered almonds - the original recipe called for walnuts)

1 3/4 cup caster sugar (original recipe required 2 cups)

1 tsp salt

4 eggs

1 1/2 cup vegetable oil

4 cups of grated carrots or the equivalent of grating around 4 medium sized carrots (original recipe needed 3 cups)

Pre-heat oven to 175C. The original recipe called for a square baking tin, but I used my bundt tin, sprayed with canola oil.

Sift flour, bicarb, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and sugar into a bowl. After sifting into the bowl I usually give it a quick whisk to further incorporate air and to make sure the dry ingredients are well mixed. (reduces the need to overmix after putting the wet ingredients later… overmixing results to a heavy (if not tough!) cake.

 I only had whole almonds so I gave them a good slicing using my mezzaluna. Which was my best excuse for the day to use this thing.

In a separate bowl, whisk eggs and vegetable oil until it turns into a nice thick yellow emulsion. 

Grate the carrots using a box grater, and mix into the emulsion. Pour wet ingredients on to dry and fold until well incorporated. Fold nuts in.

The mixture might look dry at first but keep folding, and it will be a nice thick batter. Pour onto prepared tin and bake for 40-50minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.

 Serve warm with vanilla ice cream on top, but it is also yummy served at room temperature for afternoon tea.

this one was made with a special little muffin cup, for my Official Taster, baked only for 15minutes

Now I realize I have a bit of catching up to do, but hopefully the photo above is enough to distract you for a while before you start asking for photos of the holiday!