Carrot Cake

One of my favorite cakes is carrot cake and I (before this post) hadn’t actually ever made it so I thought I would give it a try. I thought it would be a good idea considering I had left over cream cheese icing from my Red Velvet cupcakes that I had to use up which goes perfectly with carrot cake! Again this is a pretty simple recipe as you simply gather all the ingredients in one bowl and then whisk it up and voila!

Ingredients

250ml sunflower oil

4 large eggs

225g demerara or muscovado sugar

200g carrots (peeled and grated)

300g self-raising flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp ground mixed spice

1tsp ground ginger

1 tsp cinnamon

Walnuts (to decorate)

As I say this recipe is incredibly easy, whisk up the above ingredients together then evenly divide amongst two 20cm/8inch greased round sandwich tins and place in the oven at 180 degrees Celsius/ Gas mark 4/ 350 Fahrenheit.

 The cake should be in the oven for about 35 minutes or until golden brown. Then I allowed my cake to cool down. (I should note here that I only used one cake tin simply because I couldn’t find my other one however I suggest using two tins as it will cook better)

I then sandwiched the cakes together with cream cheese icing in the middle and also spread it in a swirly fashion on top. You can find the recipe for the icing I used here in my cupcake post – I would half this recipe as I used left overs from the last time.

Then to finish I decorated my cake with some walnuts on top. Fini!

 

 

 

Red (or Pink) Velvet Cupcakes

As usual I had no plans over the weekend *sad face* so I ended up doing a little baking to pass time. I have never tried to make Red Velvet Cupcakes before and as they say there is no better time than the present so I decided to give them a try. Now as you can tell from the title and the picture above my cupcakes did turn out more pink than red .. oops, but hey every mistake is a future lesson so next time I need to add more food coloring to my cake mix.

Ingredients (Makes 12 – muffin sized)

150g unsalted butter

150g caster sugar

150g self-raising flour

3 medium eggs

2.5ml vanilla extract

Red food coloring (enough until mixture is red ..not pink!)

This recipe is my favorite for cupcakes as its incredibly easy as all you need to do is add all the ingredients into the one bowl and whisk it up.

All my ingredients in the bowl (not very appetizing yet)

All whisked up! – Why I thought this was red .. I don’t even know!

Then I evenly distributed the mixture between 12 cake cases ready for the oven. These goes in the oven at Gas mark 4/180 Celsius/350 Fahrenheit for 20 mins.

Finally baked goods!

Then after allowing my cakes to cool down I made a lemon cream cheese frosting for on top. The recipe I used made well over the amount I needed so I would suggest to half this.

Frosting Ingredients

125g cream cheese

60g soft butter

150g icing sugar

2 tbsp lemon juice

350g icing sugar

Preparation

1. Beat the cream cheese and butter until combined. Then beat in 150g of icing sugar and the lemon juice.

2.Gradually beat in the remaining icing sugar until icing is of the right consistency. Using piping bag pipe on to cakes.

The end result!