Guest Recipe : The Best Carrot Cake in the World from Lindsey Cave

A lovely Guest Recipe from Lindsey, who you can find on Twitter as @MrsVanderCave, with her blog at backofbeyondbaking.blogspot.com.  That topping is perfection by the look of it.

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This recipe is actually for a carrot cake but it makes a big cake which can sometimes be a bit OTT, particularly if you like to watch your weight! So I came up with the idea of making individual cakes using half the recipe. This recipe has been named as the best carrot cake in the world ever after I used it in the school cookery book that I collated for my son’s school PTA fundraiser

The recipe below is gluten-free and for a full-sized cake but it is easily transformed back into a regular recipe by swapping the gluten-free flour for ordinary plain flour and excluding the Xantham gum. For 8 muffins just half the recipe and bake for around 18minutes.

The best Carrot cake in the world ever!

Pre heat the oven to 180c. Grease and line two 20cm cake tins. I use my cake tin liners from Lakeland.

Ingredients

250ml corn oil
175g caster sugar
3 eggs
175g gluten-free plain flour (I use Doves gluten-free flour mix)
2tsp Xantham gum (Doves Farm make this, you can get it in Tesco and Sainsburys)
1.5 tsp gluten free baking powder (check the label on your baking powder)
1.5tsp bicarbonate of soda
3/5tsp salt
1.5tsp ground cinnamon
a pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground ginger
115g chopped walnuts
225g carrots finely grated
5tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp soured cream
For the frosting
175g full fat cream cheese chilled
25g unsalted butter at room temperature
225g icing sugar sifted

Method

• Place the corn oil and sugar in a bowl and beat well with an electric mixer until thickened.
• Add the eggs one at a time and beat well after each addition. The mixture should now be pale and fluffy.
• Sift the flour, Xantham gum, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and salt into the egg mixture and beat well.
• Fold in the carrots, walnuts, vanilla extract, and soured cream.
• Divide the mixture between the tins and bake in the oven for 1hr 5minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the tin comes out clean.
• Once cooked, turn cakes out of the tins onto a wire rack to cool.
• For the frosting place all the ingredients in a bowl and whip until light and fluffy.
• Sandwich the two cakes together with a little of the frosting then cover the whole cake with the remains of the frosting. Swirl the frosting as you go to give the classic carrot cake look.