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Food writer Geraldene Holt shares her tips and techniques for adapting carrot cake to your family taste.

Frosted Carrot Cake

When it comes to cakes, Carrot Cake is the ultimate guilt-free cake, made with fresh ingredients it's a healthy treat, well almost!

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Tips and techniques

1. Weigh the ingredients properly - that goes for all cakes.
2. Get to know your oven - if you bake a lot of cakes, buy an oven thermometer.
3. Buy the best quality cake tin you can afford.
4. Use a hand grater so you can get a finer grated carrot.
5. Try freshly grinding the coriander seeds.
6. Vary the ingredients: hazelnuts and pecans work well in place of walnuts; sultanas instead of raisins; omit all fruit and nuts; use pecan nuts on top instead of the frosting icing.

Ingredients

For the cake

• 150g / 5 oz butter
• 200g / 7 oz light muscovado sugar
• 175g / 6 oz carrots, peeled and finely grated
• 1/2 orange, finely grated zest
• 2 eggs
• 200g/ 7 oz self-raising white flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander
• 1/2 tsp grated nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 120g/ 4 oz seedless raisins
• 60g / 2 oz walnuts chopped
• 3 tbps milk

For the Frosting

• 45g / 1.5 oz of cream cheese
• 175 g/6 oz icing sugar
• 1-2 drops vanilla essence or 1/4 tsp finely grated zest of lemon

Makes 25 squares

Oven: 180C / 350F / gas mark 4 - Baking time about 60 minutes

Equipment: 23cm / 9 inch buttered and base-lined square tin

Preparation method

Melt the butter in a mixing bowl and beat in the sugar, carrots, orange zest and eggs.

Fold in the flour sieved with the baking powder, spices and salt.

Add the raisins, walnuts and milk and mix until well combined.

Turn the mixture into the prepared cake tin and smooth level.

Bake in the preheated oven for an hour, until the cake is springy in the middle and a wooden skewer comes out clean from the centre. Cool in the tin for 5 minutes then turn out on to a wire rack to cool.

To make the frosting, beat the cream cheese until smooth, then gradually blend in the sifted icing sugar for a spreadable frosting.

Add vanilla essence or finely grated zest of lemon. Spread over the cake and make a pattern of swirls with the knife.

Set aside for 1-2 hours until the frosting has set, then cut the cakes into squares.

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