BAKE WITH ME: CARROT CAKE

The weather is extremely disappointing lately. It’s way to cold for summer and it’s raining almost everyday. I feel quite sad stuck inside even though it’s summer time.

So I decided to bake a cake to cheer myself up.

I love this cake because it’s pretty light, it’s not too sweet and it’s very delicious.
The most amazing part about this cake in my opinion is the frosting, because it’s not traditional buttercream (which is mainly butter and sugar) but cream cheese, mascarpone and lime juice mixture.

Also this cake is super easy to make, so if you’re not an expert in the kitchen, or you want to make something quick and easy this cake is definitely for you.

If you’re cooking cake for yourself one layer is enough, but if you want to impress someone – double the amount and make to layers.

Less rambling more baking!

What you will need:

• 250 g. unsalted butter (room temperature)
• 150 g. caster sugar (or brown sugar)
• 5 eggs
• 1 orange, zest and juice of
• 170 g. sifted flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 100 g. almond
• 100 g. walnuts (plus handful for serving)
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 pinch nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 tablespoon coconut flakes
• 250 g. carrots
• salt
• 200 g. mascarpone cheese
• 200 g. full-fat cream cheese
• 100 g. icing sugar, sifted
• 2 lime juice (or 1 lemon juice), zest of

 

 

Preheat the oven to 180 Cº, grease 22 cm round cake pan.

Beat butter with sugar until pale and fluffy.

One by one beat in egg yolks

Add the orange zest and juice. Stir in the flour with baking powder. Mix everything.

Add spices: cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, coconut flakes mix well. Add peeled and coarsely grated carrots with almonds and walnuts. Mix well.

In a separate clean bowl whisk egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff and white. Then gently fold in the cake mixture

Scoop the mixture into pan and cook in the oven for 40 – 50 minutes until golden.

When cooked wait until cake cools down completely (at least for one hour)

Then prepare your icing.

Mix mascarpone cheese, full-fat cream cheese, icing sugar, lime juice and zest

Spread the icing on the cake. Make a “crumb coat” – first spread very thin layer of icing put into fridge for 30 min. and continue spreading the rest of the icing. (I actually skipped “crumb coat” because I was too excited to eat the cake!) Finish off with a sprinkling of chopped walnuts.

I forgot to leave walnuts for my cake (fail)

So I finished this cake around 10 p.m., had one piece and left in the fridge at my parents house, in the morning there was just few pieces left because my parents ate almost everything. And my mom actually asked to bake another cake that day.

I take that as a compliment.

D. x