Easy carrot cake
Our easy carrot cake recipe only needs one tin and two bowls – just add the wet ingredients to the dry and bake. This classic carrot cake has a touch of orange and walnuts plus the obligatory cream cheese icing. It's incredibly quick to put together, but because it is baked in a single layer, it needs to cook slowly all the way through to the centre. This results in a dense, moist carrot cake that isn't too sweet. It will keep for several days in an air-tight tin, if you can restrain yourself.
Ingredients
For the carrot cake
- 4 free-range eggs, at room temperature
- 200ml/7fl oz vegetable or sunflower oil, plus a little extra for the tin
- 250g/9oz carrots, coarsely grated
- 100²µ/3½´Ç³ú raisins or sultanas (optional)
- 100²µ/3½´Ç³ú walnut pieces, plus a few extra for decoration
- 1 orange, zest only
- 200g/7oz self-raising flour
- 2 tsp mixed spice
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- ¼ tsp fine salt
- 200g/7oz light brown sugar
For the cream cheese frosting
- 150g/5½oz unsalted butter, softened
- 3 tbsp caster sugar
- 250g–300g/9–10½oz full-fat cream cheese, at room temperature
Method
For the carrot cake, preheat the oven to 180C/170C Fan/Gas 4. Grease and line a deep, 20cm/8in round cake tin with baking paper.
Break the eggs into a large bowl, and lightly whisk using a fork. Add the vegetable oil and whisk again. Stir in the grated carrots, raisins, walnut pieces and orange zest.
In a separate large bowl, sift together the flour, mixed spice, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Stir in the sugar.
Add the wet carrot mixture to the dry ingredients and mix well to combine, making sure there are no pockets of flour.
Spoon the cake batter into the lined tin and bake on the middle shelf for 1–1¼ hours, until the cake has risen and is golden-brown all over. Remove the cake from the oven and set aside in the tin to cool for 10–15 minutes, then turn the cake out and leave to cool completely on a wire rack.
While the carrot cake cools, make the frosting. Place the softened butter in a large bowl with the caster sugar, beat it for 2–3 minutes until light and creamy, then stir in the cream cheese until smooth.
Place the cake on a serving plate or cake stand. Use a palette knife, or flat-bladed knife, to spread the frosting over the top and sides of the cake. Scatter more walnuts on the top and serve.
Recipe Tips
Before frosting, carrot cake will keep for a week and can be frozen for up to a month. Once the cake is frosted keep it chilled.
Make sure the cake is completely cold before adding the frosting. If it's warm it will melt and slide off.
Although we love the easy-going simplicity of this cake, if you want something a little fancier, you can leave the cake to cool completely before carefully slicing it horizontally into two (or even three) layers and sandwiching them with the cream cheese frosting. It will create an impressive stack for special occasions.
It's essential to use full-fat cream cheese as reduced-fat varieties will result in a runny icing. It's worth checking the fat content on the labels when shopping as some of the budget lines are also comparatively low in fat. Some people swear by branded cream cheese and it's probably because it contains stabilisers which make it easier to work with. Whatever type you use, pour away any liquid in the tub before gently mixing into the creamed butter and sugar. You can beat the butter and sugar really vigorously, but once the cream cheese is added be gentle and stop once it's incorporated.
If you need to thicken your cream cheese frosting don't be tempted to add more icing sugar as this doesn't help (and can actually make it worse). Chilling it and stirring in a little cornflour is a better bet, but very runny frosting is difficult to fix.
If you're not keen on walnuts, pecan nuts work well as an alternative.