We had company for dinner this weekend, and I found a favourite carrot cake recipe. I had copied this recipe some years back, when I first started baking in the Bundt pan, but I lost it, then couldn’t find the source. Therefore, I do admit that this is not my original recipe and I don’t remember the source. If anyone out there recognizes it, my apologies, and great appreciation for a divine cake!

Carrot Orange Cake

Ingredients:

2.5 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2  tsp salt
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
2.5 cups sugar
3 eggs
2/3 cup butter melted and cooled
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups shredded carrots
1/2 cup orange juice
zest of 1 orange
1 cup raisins

Preheat oven (I did at 200 deg C). Grease and flour a 9-inch baking pan. (I have tried this cake in a Bundt pan too, but the raisins stick to the pan, and it comes out a mess, hence a normal pan is best.)

In a large mixing bowl, sift flour, soda, salt and spices. In a medium mixing bowl, beat sugar, butter, eggs, juice, orange zest & vanilla until smooth. Pour into dry ingredients and stir until almost combined. Stir in shredded carrots, and then raisins. Batter should have carrots and raisins evenly distributed, and no dry streaks of flour remaining.

Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake for 50 min at 180 deg C, or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn cake out on a wire rack to cool.

The cake is fairly dense and a little sticky, thanks to all the orange juice in it. Tastes great by itself! However, this time round I decided to dress it up a little, with cream cheese frosting. There are hundreds of cream cheese frosting recipes on the net, and lots of decorating ideas too. I picked this proportion:

Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting

Cream cheese frosting

250 gm Philadelphia cream cheese
1/2 cup butter
3 cups icing sugar, sifted
1 tsp vanilla essence

Sifting the icing sugar is a must, for getting the smoothness and uniformity in the icing. After getting the butter and cheese to room temperature, I mixed all the ingredients, and the frosting was ready.

I tried my hand at icing the cake, with instructions from the net. It was quite easy to do, but with the heat in my city, I had no wish to spend too much time in the kitchen. So I spread the icing on the cake with a butter knife, then used a small basting brush to get the chaotic ‘floral pattern’ that you see in the picture.

Looked good, tasted great, I’m happy 😛