Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Smug carrot cake

I call this my smug carrot cake because I made the cream cheese icing myself with my Mad Millie kit!  This is another Ray McVinnie instant classic, I made it today and everyone went nuts for it.  Carrot cake can be quite ordinary, but this version transforms carrot cake into something other-worldly!  Ray's version is gluten free.  Mine is gluten.  I'll note my other changes too.

Ray McVinnie's Carrot Cake (Sunday Star-Times, 10 April 2011)

3/4 cup rice flour
1/4 cup corn flour  (I replaced these first two with a cup of flour)
1/2 cup ground almonds
1/1/2 cups caster sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda (measure really carefully, you don't want that soapy taste from using too much)
3/4 tsp baking powder
1 TBSP ground cinammon (I only had half a TBSP left so made it up with mixed spice)
1 TBSP ground ginger
1 cup walnut pieces (use really good quality walnuts.  I only had 3/4 cup so I added half a cup of sultanas)
3/4 cup dessicated coconut (I only had the long stuff)
3/4 cup grapeseed or vege oil
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups grated carrot
3/4 cup crushed pineapple, well drained.

Preheat the oven to 180C.  Butter a 23cm-diametre loose bottomed cake tin and line with paper (I decided to use a 20cm tin and make some cupcakes at the same time).
Place the dry ingrediants in a bowl and mix well.  Add all the rest and mix well. Pour into the tin and place in the oven for 45-50mins until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.  Remove from the oven and cool completely.
When cool, remove from tin and cut in half so that you have two layers.   Spread half of the icing between the two layers, then put the rest on the top.

Icing:

3.5cups icing sugar
100g softened butter (I used my freshly made cream cheese)
zest and juice of 2 lemons (I used 3 - I like it runnier)

Mix until smooth.

2 comments:

  1. Funny, I made this last Sunday as soon as I saw it in the paper...only to discover after it was baked that i had forgotten to add the sugar. So annoying - it looked so delicious. Nice to have verefication of its amazingness though so shall definitely try again!

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  2. Oh no I hate it when I forget an ingrediant!

    It is awesome - could perhaps use a little less oil though. I cooked the cake in a paper wrapper, as well as a few cupcakes. The next day the cupcake leftovers were soaked through with oil.

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