Wednesday 27 January 2010

Carrot Cakes and Loaded Skins!



Just look at these beauties! And you can make them too!!

I had an urge to find a good carrot cake recipe, having devoured the most moist, creamy spectacularly delicious cake at an orienteering event on Sunday. Surfing the web, I found a lovely one for carrot cake muffins at www.cooksforcooks.com, a darker sponge with a lovely sounding 'frosting'. Easy to make, they were moist and moreish, although the topping was a little sweet for me. I added more cream cheese, but it wasn't stiff enough. I think the answer is to replace some of the butter with some cream cheese and perhaps cut down on the sugar a little, say 50g. And they needed a little salt.

Anyway, here is the recipe!

Carrot Cakes

250g wholemeal flour
25g baking powder
1.5 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
half tsp salt
125g desiccated coconut
250g muscovado sugar (I used light brown soft sugar)
5 eggs
185ml sunflower oil
500g grated carrots
125g raisins (optional)

Heat the oven to 180 degrees/Gas mk 5.
Mix the dry ingredients and wet ingredients in separate bowls. Add the carrot to the dry mix and stir to break up the lumps. Add the wet and mix until just combined; over-beating makes the muffins tough and dry.
This recipe makes 16 muffins, so divide the mixture between muffin cups, lined with paper cases and bake for 22 minutes. Leave to cool.

Meanwhile, whizz together 250g cream cheese, 125g butter and 325g icing sugar with the zest of an orange in a processor until smooth. Use a piping bag with a large nozzle to make swirls of icing on the top, soooo professional!


What I have been cooking:

Yesterday's tea was a couple of spare baked potatoes from the night before, nearly all of the insides scooped out, cut into six pieces each, sprinkled with lots of grated cheese and baked for 15 mins in a 200 degree oven, yum! We had home-made coleslaw and houmous with it.

Tonight, we had pasta and I made a sauce with butter, onion, two cloves of garlic, shredded cabbage, sliced mushrooms and a splash of soy sauce. Delish.

Breakfast tomorrow will be Waitrose Essentials croissants, which I reckon are better than their normal ones - well done Waitrose! Find them at http://www.waitrose.com

1 comment:

  1. I made your Carrot cake muffins. Not only were they easy to make, but they tasted fabulous too, and 16 is a good quantity. I agree with you that the topping is a bit sweet and not quite stiff enough. Next time I'm only going to make half the amount of topping (and with less sugar), but there definitely WILL be a next time!

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