Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting - Simple and Delicious

I've made this carrot cake more times than I remember. However, I hadn't made it for a while and when I went to my own blog (which I use like my own digital cookbook) to find the recipe, I realised I hadn't blogged it yet *gasp*. Hence here is the recipe. Of the many many carrot cake recipes I've tried, it's my favourite. I first found the recipe on the Kitchen Wench blog. Now it is one of my favourite go to recipe when I want something fast and tasty. The texture of this cake is beautifully crumbly and the flavours are really good. Of course you need to make the cream cheese frosting as it really enhances this cake.

In terms of making this cake, it's so easy. A one pan all in one mix. You don't even need an electric mixer. The hardest part is grating all the carrots.

Some tips for a good bake:

* Don't grate the carrots too finely as it will really release the water and the texture won't be as good.
* I like to put roughly chopped nuts to get the texture when I eat it.
* I like the spices to be fairly strong so I use about 1/2 tsp of cinnamon and 1/4 tsp of nutmeg.
* I've made a slight addition to this recipe where I sandwich fresh bananas between the carrot cake. For me it enhances the cake so much and I was really surprised how well it works. So I'd recommend sandwiching the bananas.

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

INGREDIENTS
200g (2 cups) self-raising flour
1 heaped cup of brown sugar
a couple of dashes of ground cinnamon and nutmeg, according to taste
2/3 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
2 1/2 medium carrots, grated*
120-150g roughly chopped walnuts

Cream Cheese Frosting

250g Softened Cream Cheese
80g Softened Butter
1 tbsp Vanilla Essence
1 cups Icing Sugar (add more or less icing to your liking)

OPTIONAL
2/3 cup sultanas
2 bananas sliced, to sandwich between the carrot cake

METHOD
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C and line a non-stick 18cm cake tin.

2. Sift together flour, sugar and spices in one bowl, and lightly beat together the eggs and oil in a separate bowl.

3. Toss the grated carrot and coarsely chopped walnuts through the flour (if you’re adding sultanas to the mix, do so at this stage), then add the oil and egg mixture and stir till combined.

4. Pour mix into the prepared cake tin and bake for 45 min – 1hr, or till a wooden skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out with a few moist crumbs clinging to it. Allow to cool in tin for 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack.

5. If sandwiching the bananas, cut the cake in half horizontally. Lay out the slice bananas on the bottom until the cake is completely covered. Put the top half of the cake over the bananas.

6. For the cream cheese frosting, beat cream cheese and butter until smooth and fluffy. Mix in vanilla essence and icing sugar until the desired sweetness. Spread cream cheese frosting generously over cake.