Baking
Carrot Cake with Orange Blossom Frosting
Serves Makes 1 Cake (10 Portions)
Ingredients
- 3 eggs
- 150ml vegetable oil, plus extra for greasing
- 200g light brown sugar
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
- 340g grated carrots, (grated weight)
- 100g golden raisins
- 100g walnuts, chopped
- 200g self-raising flour
- 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
For the orange blossom frosting:
- 300g cream cheese, chilled
- 70g room temperature Kerrygold Pure Irish Unsalted Butter
- 300g icing sugar, sifted
- 1 orange, zest only
- 1 teaspoon of orange blossom water
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 180°C and oil and line a 13 x 23cm loaf tin with greaseproof paper.
- For the carrot cake: beat the eggs in a large bowl, then add the oil, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, grated carrot, raisins and chopped walnuts.
- Sift in the rest of the dry ingredients and bring the mixture together using a wooden or large metal spoon until well combined. Pour the mixture into the prepared loaf tin, smooth the surface and bake in the oven for 1 hour 15 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. If you’re using a ceramic baking dish then you’ll need to add 15 minutes to the cooking time.
- Remove from the oven and allow the cake to cool in the tin for about five minutes before removing. Cool completely on a wire rack before serving.
- For the orange blossom frosting: beat the cream cheese and butter together in a bowl until well combined. Add the icing sugar, orange blossom water and finely grated orange zest and mix until the frosting is smooth and thick. Using a palette knife, spread the frosting evenly over the cooled cake, dipping the knife into a bowl of hot water if the icing is hard to spread out.
- Decorate with orange zest on top of the frosting.
