However, I made this Hummingbird Bakery recipe carrot cake and it was splendiferous. Fucking marvellous in fact. Seriously huge cake, the biggest cake I've ever made I swear. Super moist, shit loads of frosting, winning. I made a few slight changes, few more spices, and jazzed up the decoration (competition got to my head a bit...)
Ingredients:
300g light brown sugar
300g grated carrots (about 3 large carrots)
3 eggs
3 ml vegetable oil
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
100 g broken mixed nuts
For the frosting:
250g cream cheese
100g butter
600g icing sugar
For decoration:
Cocoa powder
Orange food colouring
Green writing icing
Method:
1) Preheat oven to 170 degrees and grease two large cake tins (Hummingbird calls for 3 smaller ones, but I didn't have 3 the same size!)
2) Whisk the eggs, oil and sugar until combined (might look a bit curdled and suspicious but stick with it).
3) Slowly add flour, baking powder, spices, salt, vanilla extract and mix until combined.
4) Add in the carrots and mixed nuts and stir until evenly distributed.
5) Pour mixtures into tins and level off with a knife.
6) Bake for about 30-40 minutes. Until golden on the top and springy to the touch. Take out to cool on a wire rack.
8) Spread about the third of the frosting on top of one of the cakes and place the other half on top.
9) Spread more of the frosting around the sides and top of the cake, saving about two tablespoons for the carrots. spread the frosting evenly and smooth off with a knife.
10) Dust the top of the cake with cocoa powder for soil.
11) Mix the last bit of frosting with the food colouring and pipe using a wide star nozzle onto the "soil". Use green writing icing to create a kind of stalk effect. This was very ad lib, so just see how you go.