Carrot cakes are one of my favourite cakes – especially with cream cheese frosting. The important thing about carrot cake is that it needs to be moist and jam packed with flavours. I like my carrot cakes without any sultanas and with lots of walnuts. This time, I’ve decided to experiment on cream cheese frosting and I had to cut down the sugar like crazy because most recipes call for more than 400g of icing sugar, which is insane! I’ve tried to cut down the sugar as much as I can without compromising the texture of the cake, hope that you’ll enjoy it as much as I did!

Tips for making the perfect carrot cake

1. Make it a day in advance – it takes time for the flavours to come out so let the cake rest in the refrigerator for a day before serving.
2. For the cream cheese frosting, make sure that the butter and cream cheese are at room temperature
3. To make the cream cheese frosting, add the sugar in by batches then beat it at high speed for a minute

P.s you can also place the batter into muffin trays and you’ll get carrot muffins!

Nutrition per slice of cake (16 serves)

Ingredients for the cake

1. 200g brown sugar
2. 50g caster sugar
3. 200ml olive oil
4. 300g plain flour
5. 300g grated carrots – about 4 whole carrots
6. 4 large eggs
7. Juice and zest 1 orange – about 80ml orange juice
8. 3 tbs honey
9. 2 tsp baking powder
10. 1 tsp bicarbonate soda
11. 1.5 tsp cinnamon powder
12. 0.25 tsp nutmeg
13. 200g walnuts
14. 1 tsp vanilla essence

Ingredients for the cream cheese frosting

1. 500g cream cheese
2. 60g unsalted butter
3. 100g icing sugar
4. 1 tsp vanilla essence

Directions

Preparation time: 30 min
Baking time: 30-35min or when the skewer comes out clean

1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees
2. Grease two 9-inch cake tins (or you can use one and then cut the cake into half)
3. Grate 300g of carrots and squeeze and zest 1 orange
4. In a large mixing bowl, mix in the brown sugar, caster sugar, eggs, orange juice, orange zest, olive oil, honey and vanilla essence
5. Whisk the wet ingredients together
6. In a separate mixing bowl, prepare the plain flour, cinnamon powder, nutmeg, bicarbonate soda and baking powder
7. Sieve the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients
8. Mix it well until uniform consistency
9. Mix in the carrots and walnuts
10. Make sure that the ingredients are well mixed.
11. Pour it into two separate baking pans
12. Bake for 30-35min or until the skewer comes out clean. Let the cake cool down.

To make the frosting

1. To prepare the cream cheese frosting, cream the cream cheese until light and fluffy
2. Add in the butter and vanilla essence and continue to cream until a uniform mixture
3. Add the icing sugar in in batches and continue to cream until the frosting looks smooth
4. Place the cake on a board and then spread about half of the cream cheese frosting evenly throughout the first layer
5. Stack the second layer of cake on top of the first
6. Using a palette knife, spread a thin layer of cream cheese on the whole cake surface
7. Prepare a piping bag and using a closed star tip, start piping along the edge of the cake
8. Spread the remaining cream cheese frosting left at the top of the cake and then decorate with some walnuts or cinnamon sugar

There you have it! The perfect carrot cake.