Carrot Cake with cream cheese frosting

I needed to make a birthday cake for a friend today and asked another friend Mandy for a suggestion. She came up with Carrot cake which was great because I have never made one before so it was a great challenge!

I read quite a few recipes first and found that although they had many of the same ingredients they varied greatly in quantities and cooking times, so I decided to base my recipe on what I thought would go well after my research :)

Ingredients

Cake

3 Eggs
200g soft light brown Sugar
100g Light brown muscavado sugar
250ml Sunflower oil
300g Plain flour
1 tsp Baking powder
1 tsp Bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
250g grated Carrots
100g shelled walnuts chopped plus extra to decorate

For frosting & decoration

600g icing sugar (sifted)
100g unsalted butter at room temperature
250g full fat cream cheese
1/2 bag of orange chocolate button melts here http://www.silverspoon.co.uk/home/products/cakecraft/silver-spoon-create-flavoured-chocolate-
1 tube green writing icing


Preheat the oven to 190C/Gas 4 and grease and base line the bottom of 3 20cm sandwich tins.

The first thing I did was to make the carrots by melting the orange buttons and using a piping bag fitted with a very small nozzle, piping the carrots on to a piece of cling film on a plastic tray. I then put these in the fridge to set.

To make the cake I Put the eggs, both sugars and the oil and beat until I had a smooth batter. In a separate bowl I had the flour, Baking powder, Bicarbonate of soda, Cinnamon, Ginger, Salt and vanilla extract, I slowly added this to the batter mixture a spoonful at a time beat slowly until all added and well mixed.

I then added the grated carrots and walnuts and stirred in with a wooden spoon.

I then split the mixture between the three tins. I always weigh my mixture to try and ensure the cakes are as even as possible but you could just do this by eye. I levelled the tops and baked for 20 minutes untill the sponge bounced back when pressed and a skewer inserted into centre of cakes came out clean.

When cakes are done, leave to cool slightly in tins before turning out on to a cooling rack and leaving to cool completely.

When cakes have cooled make the frosting by beating together the icing sugar and butter, then adding the cream cheese and beating until glossy and smooth. I then layered up the cake with a layer of frosting between each layer, I then spread the whole cake with a thin layer of the frosting, making sure I still had about a third of the frosting remaining. after spreading the thin layer of frosting I put the cake in the fridge for 30 mins. This layer then works as an undercoat for the next layer and stops you getting crumbs in the top layer.

After the 30 mins I spread the remaining frosting on to the cake and created swirls on the top. I then added Walnut halves and my carrots and used the green writing icing to add the carrot tops.