Sweet Tooth Cravings? Eat Carrot Cake!

It had been some time since my SO had gone to India for office work. As the day of his arrival came closer, my mind starting buzzing with thoughts to cook something special for him. Maybe his favourite, Paneer Masala or a Cheesy Mushroom Lasagne? I started flipping pages of the cookbook of my mind. I decided to check my fridge and my gaze fell on a packet of carrots. "What was I thinking about all this while when I could just make a simple and yummy Carrot & Walnut Cake!". A quick trip to the market, and I had just what I needed to make this delicious teacake..

What's more, you can make it eggless! and #VeganAlert - You can go the Vegan way too!! Just read on and I'll tell you how!

Ingredients

Self Raising Flour/ All Purpose Flour- 2&1/2 cup
Breakfast Sugar- 1 cup (Quick tip- If you want to avoid this, you can do so by adding overripe bananas. Just mash them and add bananas equivalent to a cup!)
Salt- 1/2 tsp
Baking powder- 1 tsp
Cinnamon- 1/2 tsp

Carrots- 1 cup, grated (slightly more than a cup is fine but do not go overboard like Bugs Bunny!)
Chopped Walnuts- 1/2 cup

White vinegar/ Cider vinegar- 1 tsp
Oil- 5 tbsp
Milk- 1 cup (Vegan lovers, you can substitute this with water. I added milk for moistness and a rich flavour)
Vanilla essence- a capful/ 1/2 tsp. I used Madagascar Vanilla, which has an amazing aroma, so you can lay your hands on one at your nearest food store!

Method

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees. Make sure it stays at the same temperature throughout! ;)

Take the dry ingredients- flour, baking powder, cinnamon powder and salt and pass it through a sieve so that they get mixed well and transfer them to a mixing bowl.

Add sugar to this mixture and mix it very well so that the sugar gets evenly spread with the other ingredients. Add carrot and chopped walnuts to this mixture and once again mix well.

Now in separate bowl, blend the vinegar, oil, and vanilla essence and mashed banana (in case you've skipped putting sugar). Add all these to the dry mixture and mix. You will notice that the mixture becomes slightly like a crumbly dough.

Not to fret! Now add milk to the mixture and mix very well with a spatula so that all ingredients get blended well. The mixture will now be semi liquid with slight lumps, which is quite typical of carrot cakes.

Transfer this mixture to a butter or margarine-greased 8 inch cake mould. You can also line your mould with butter paper before you transfer the mixture so that the cake doesn't stick after getting baked. Place it in the baking rack and bake it for about 35-40 minutes. After the 35 minute mark you can insert a tooth pick to check if it comes out clean. If not, then bake it for a few more minutes.

My faithful oven doing its job

By this time, the rich aroma will start filling up your kitchen and thats the signal that its time to take it out, cool it on a cooling rack and relish it!

Just out of the oven

I also made a cream cheese frosting for it. For this, you can follow these easy steps-

Mix well 100gm unsalted butter with 30gm caster sugar. Blend them together until light and creamy. Then add 200gm cream cheese and mix well. Spread this yummylicious icing on top of the cake. I preferred to give it a natural, homely look by putting dollops of frosting and decorating it with some golden sprinklers. 

All decked up, ready to roll!

To make the process quicker, you can use the Betty Crocker Frosting, which is a butter cream icing.

Hope you enjoy trying the recipe at home! Comment, Like and Share.. and keep visiting my blog for more fun stuff!

Love, Kshipra