I rarely bake because I’m not much of a cake eater, but I have on occasion had to use up some leftover carrots, in which case my go-to option is to bake it into a carrot cake.  This recipe was originally sourced from the Thermomix recipe community, but I’ve made so many adjustments that it bears no resemblance to the original.

I find Western cake recipes to be way, way too sweet for my palate, so I halve the sugar or more as a matter of course, and it was no exception here.

Also, since I love cream cheese, I ramped up the topping 5-fold – the icing portion has less than one fifth the sugar called for in the original recipe, and more than 5x the cream cheese. You’ll probably end up with extra cream cheese topping; I do 500g because it’s nicely equal to two x 250g blocks of cream cheese and as an Asian cook, I never have any other use for it.

Finally, I never have walnuts in my pantry (again, Asian cook), so I make it nut-free and it actually works out well for when I take this to church for morning tea etc. because it conveniently avoids any allergy issues.

By the way, I’m a very unsophisticated baker; I throw everything together and mix it; no sifting/adding stuff in stages, blitzing at different speeds for x number of seconds etc. for me.

Carrot Cake

INGREDIENTS:

400 grams carrots, cut into chunks
2 eggs
100 grams sugar
160 grams cooking oil
1/4 tsp salt
200 grams plain flour
1 tsp baking powder

Icing –
150g sugar
500g cream cheese
45g butter
1/2 tsp lemon juice

METHOD:

1. Pre-heat oven to 180’C. Line an 8-inch cake tin with baking paper.
2. Grate carrots, or if using a Thermomix, process for a few seconds until crumbly.
3. Add all other ingredients (except the icing stuff) and blend until well combined.
4. Transfer into baking tin and bake for 50 minutes. Check for doneness, remove and cool.
5. Combine icing ingredients in Thermomix or food processor, blend until well-mixed. Spread on cake; cut and serve.

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