One of the best things on Earth is a good carrot cake. This time I've baked a Carrot Cake Loaf instead of the classic round shape, even if the baking takes a bit longer.
I decorated the loaf with pink rose petals, fresh-green lime zest and of course chopped walnuts. It's a perfect treat for the upcoming Mother's day this weekend too!
Ingredients
Batter
- 250 g carrots, peeled, grated
- 115 g flour
- 100 g sugar
- 100 g walnuts, chopped
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 2 eggs
- 70 ml olive or other oil or even melted butter - I've chosen the Arbequino extra virgin, singe variety olive oil from Reinos de Taifas, since it has not too strong olive taste at all!
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- ½ tsp nutmeg
- ½ tsp ginger
- ½ tsp mixed spice
Lime - cream cheese frosting
- 100 g butter, softened
- 180 g cream cheese softened
- 300-500 g icing sugar - depends on how stiff filling would you like to prepare
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- ½ lime, juice
Decoration (optional)
- Rose petals
- Walnut, chopped
- Lime zest, freshly grated
Instructions
- Sift the flour together with the baking powder plus the spices.
- Add the sugar and the chopped walnuts.
- Incorporate the eggs and oil, beat it with your hand mixer.
- Incorporate the grated carrots.
- At this point, you can choose to divide the batter between smaller sandwich tins or use lined loaf tin to bake it -as I did-.
- Preheat the oven to 180 °C.
- If you bake a loaf, it will take for a while, from 40-60 minutes, depending on your oven, but if it passes the toothpick test, you can stop baking.
- Let the cake cool down to room temperature.
- In the meanwhile prepare the frosting.
- Beat the butter by hand mixer till it's creamy, add the cream cheese, vanilla extract, and lime juice.
- Add the icing sugar gradually till it has the desired consistency.
- When the cake is cold enough, slice the loaf in half, fill it with the frosting. You can skip this step if you want, but in this case, I recommend you prepare just the half amount of the frosting!
- Cover the top of the loaf with the frosting, sprinkle some rose petals, chopped walnuts and freshly grated lime zest on it.
Carrot Cake Loaf - Photo by © Reka Csulak
