Sundays are usually the day I bake. Although I feel like baking all the time. It winds me down and helps me to relax.
It was a cloudy Sunday, perfect weather for a carrot cake. In addition, I just happened to have (or not, it was planned) a packet of julienne carrots ready since the Wednesday. Not to mention the secret ingredient, cream cheese.
The cloudy day also meant great lighting for taking photos. I could whip out my photo boards and take great photos.
A word of advice, do not be lazy and leave the julienne carrots as is (not saying that I did it). Chop them some more or whizz it through the food processor. I have come across a woman that cooks and puree the carrots. Which I would suggest too.
I look at a few recipes of the subject that I wish to bake and combine that which correlates.
As with all my recipes, I prefer using butter instead of oil. It changes the taste of food completely. For this recipe I used the healthier option, coconut oil.
Looking for a flavourful and sweet-spiced taste, I added aniseed stars to the recipe. I added it on top of the mixture just before it went into the oven. Picking it off easily as it came out, as to not have chewy bits in the cake.
Also looking for that partly humming bird cake taste, I added pineapple. Lots of it.
This recipe came out chunky and moist. Lovely pieces of pineapple, shreds of coconut and thick carrot bits.
Herewith the labour of love.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup of brown sugar
- 125ml of coconut oil
- 3 large eggs
- 2 cups of flour
- 2 cups of finely grated carrots
- 1 cup of chopped pineapple
- 1 cup of desiccated coconut
- ½ cup of chopped pecan nuts (or walnuts)
- 2 teaspoons of baking powder
- A dash of salt
- 5 or 8 pieces of aniseed
Frosting:
- 250g of cream cheese
- 2 cups of icing sugar
Method:
- Set the oven to 180 C.
- Lay out two small round tins with baking paper.
- Cream the sugar, butter and eggs together in a bowl until light and fluffy.
- Sift the flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon in a separate bowl.
- Fold the flour mixture into the butter mixture.
- Fold the carrots, pineapple, coconut and nuts into the wet mixture.
- Pour the cake mixture into the cake tins.
- Place the aniseed stars on top.
- Bake for 40 minutes or till the testing stick comes out clean.
- Let the cake cool down.
- Beat the cream cheese and icing sugar together
- Take out the aniseed stars
- Spread the icing on each layer of cake
- Decorate with nuts or cinnamon
- Take photos, tag @lianieheyns and EAT
