Carrot Cake – and vintage finds

By lovinghomemade on February 17, 2013 • ( 2 )

Carrot Cake

This carrot cake recipe came about because I had some carrots that needed using up. I had intended to make Carrot Cupcakes but having recently invested in a small food processor that lives in a tiny corner of the kitchen counter, instead of a large one that mainly stayed in its box due to the perceived efforts of assembling and hours of washing up required, I was keen to use it to grate the carrots. I accidentally sliced them instead as it turns out you have to have the attachment one way up or the other, depending on whether you want to slice or grate. The first five times I used it I managed to grate things and thought I knew what I was doing, the next three things got sliced before I managed to work it out for myself…

So despite putting them through the food processor again I had some largish pieces of carrot that were not going to get cooked properly in a cupcake recipe! I had recently made an apple cake and I thought that style of recipe would be a perfect base for my chopped carrots so I adapted it and came up with this cake. It is a sort of “farmhouse fruit cake” style carrot cake, rather than an American style sponge. I didn’t ice mine but I’m sure it would be good with the traditional cream cheese icing if you fancied it.

Recipe

Ingredients

200g grated or chopped carrots

170g soft brown sugar

100ml light olive oil

½ teaspoon vanilla essence

2 eggs

250g SR flour

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

170g raisins

Method

Set the oven to 170ºC. Grease and line a deep 8″ cake tin.

In a large bowl, mix together the carrots, soft brown sugar, oil, vanilla essence and beaten egg.

In a separate bowl sieve together the flour and cinnamon.

Stir the flour mixture into the carrot mixture and then mix in the raisins.

Spoon into the prepared cake tin and level the top.

Bake for 50-60 minutes or until firm and golden brown. A skewer inserted into the middle should come out clean.

Allow to cool for about 10 minutes in the tin before turning out onto a cooling rack.

Carrot Cake

You can clearly see the largish pieces of carrot in the cake!

And I hope you like my cake slice, stand and plate: the cake stand is from a church fête on the Isle of Wight last summer, the cake slice from an antique shop in Bath and the plate is a vintage one I found in a Windsor charity shop. I don’t “do” shopping but this is one area where I will make an exception! The tin that you can see in the background of my first picture is a beautiful tin that I had admired in my favourite antique shop in Windsor, when out with my friend Jo one day: and being the kind and thoughtful friend that she is, she remembered and got it for me for my birthday last summer. Thanks Jo!