Carrot Cake

Another world famous (in our house) recipe. This is pretty quick and easy cake to make, and always turns out good. It can also be poured into a muffin tin to make muffins/cupcakes instead of a cake.

Use any type (white, caster, raw, brown) of sugar. Brown sugar gives a slightly denser cake and a bit more caramel flavour, but all seem to work ok. For the oil, use one with a neutral flavour, though we usually use olive oil and that still tastes fine.

Ice with cream cheese icing to get the full effect. If making the icing make sure that the butter and cream cheese are at room temperature otherwise you end up with lumps in the icing, which still tastes fine but looks a bit weird.

Quantity: 1 cake or 10 - 12 muffins

Prep time: about 20 minutes

Cook time: 35 - 40 minutes for a cake, 15 - 20 minutes for muffins

Ingredients 

Quantity	Ingredient
1 c	Flour
1 tsp	Baking powder
1 tsp	Baking soda
1 tsp	Ground cinnamon
1 c	Sugar
2	Eggs
½ c	Oil
2½ c	Grated carrot
Cream Cheese Icing
25 gm	Butter
75 gm	Cream cheese
¼ tsp	Vanilla essence
4 Tbsp	Icing sugar

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180° C. 
2. If making the cake then line a 20 cm ring tin with baking paper on the bottom. If you don't have a ring tin it should still work but the cake will be a bit thinner. If making muffins then line a muffin tray with cupcake cases
3. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon into a large bowl
4. In a separate bowl beat the oil and eggs together then stir in the sugar and mix well
5. Add the oil mix and grated carrot to the flour mix and stir until it's combined and there are no visible traces of flour
6. Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin or muffin tray and leave for about 5 minutes for everything to settle
7. Bake for around 35 - 40 minutes, until the cake springs back when lightly touched and a skewer comes out clean if poked into the cake. Muffins will take about half that time
8. Leave for 10 minutes then turn out onto a cooling rack. Leave until cold to ice otherwise the icing melts and slides off

For the icing, place all the icing ingredients into either a food processor or a clean bowl and either process, or beat with a wooden spoon until smooth and well mixed