Carrot Cake
Cake Batter
Ingredients:
150g eggs
250g light olive oil
240g brown sugar
290g plain flour
8g pumpkin pie mixed spice
7g bicarb soda
4g baking powder
2g salt
270g grated carrot
130g fresh pineapple
85g sultanas
85g dried apricot
50g walnuts
Method:
Line the bottom of 2x 8” cake tins with baking paper. Preheat oven to 170C fan bake. Use a large mixing bowl, add the eggs, oil and sugar and whisk to combine. add all the dry ingredients and stir through to combine. Finally, add the carrot, pineapple, dried fruits and nuts and fold through to combine. Distribute the batter evenly between the 2 cake tins. Bake the cakes for about 40 minutes or until it bounces back to the touch. Allow to cool for about an hour before removing from the tins.
Orange & Vanilla Cream Cheese Icing
Ingredients:
115g unsalted butter
250g cream cheese
125g pure icing sugar (sieved)
4g vanilla bean extract
12g fresh orange juice
Method:
Bring the butter and cream cheese to about room temperature - I do this by heating in the microwave in short bursts (15 second intervals for butter, 30 second intervals for cream cheese). If the cream cheese is too cold you may end up with small lumps of butter that don’t incorporate properly. Use the scraper paddle on your stand mixer and beat the butter and cream cheese together until it’s smooth and whippy (see first image). Now add in the sieved icing sugar and continue to whip for 2 minutes. Finally, add in the vanilla and orange and mix just to incorporate. This recipe makes an icing that isn’t too sweet but at this point you can taste it and add more icing sugar to adjust the sweetness how you like it. Adding more sugar will make it slightly thicker in texture too.
Final Assembly
Ingredients:
2 baked Carrot Cake slabs
Vanilla & Orange cream cheese icing
Dried apricots
Pepitas
Walnuts
Method:
It will be easiest to work with cold cakes from the fridge. Apply about a third of the cream cheese icing to the bottom cake then place the second cake on top. For the top of the cake, I like to apply a “crumb coat” which is a very thin layer of icing spread evenly over the cake surface and allowed to set firm in the fridge. We want to allow the crumb coat to solidify in the fridge for about an hour, then we can go ahead and apply the rest of the icing to the top of the cake without worrying about crumb contamination. Garnish the cake however you like, I like to roughly chop the apricots and walnuts and just sprinkle everything on top. Enjoy it straight from the fridge.