Wednesday 11 June 2014

NUTTY 'NANA AND CARROT CAKE



I love a good old carrot cake. I find it funny that the thought of a vegetable in a cake used to horrify me back in the day. A perfect example of you should always try everything once, you never know what you might be missing out on. I've had some cracking carrot cakes in the past and this is by far the best one I've made in my mission to try and emulate them. I think the secret lies in the addition of mashed bananas. You would never eat a banana and a carrot together outside of the realms of cake so I've no idea why the two seem to work so well in this recipe but trust me when I tell you it's so beautifully soft, light and moist that's is defiantly one to give a go.


Two bits of advice:

Firstly, don't think you have to use walnuts, they are just my favourites. Pecans, Brazil's or pistachios would all work just as well so if you have any of these lying around your kitchen don't be afraid to throw them in instead. I know I often have half packs of nuts lying around so don't be afraid to mix them up as well in some kind of crazy nut medley. It's a great way to use up the bit and bobs and clear some space.

Secondly, for those wanting to reduce the calories in this cake replace half the volume of the sunflower oil with Greek yogurt and use low fat cream cheese in your frosting. By no means am I saying this makes it low calorie but as a little treat on the weekend if you can still cut out some extra calories that has to be a bonus and remember that a little bit of what you fancy won't kill you! 

Banana and Carrot Cake

For The Cake:

300g Golden Caster Sugar
3 Medium Eggs
300ml Sunflower Oil
200g Mashed Bananas
1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
1 Tbsp Ground Cinnamon
300g Plain Flour
1 Tsp Bicarbonate Of Soda
1/2 Tsp Salt
200g Peeled and Grated Carrots
100g Chopped Walnuts

For The Frosting:

450g Icing Sugar
75g Soft Butter
1 Tbsp Vanilla Extract
175g Cream Cheese
Ground Cinnamon And Whole Walnuts To Decorate



  1. First things first, get your oven on to 180 degrees (160 fan).
  2. Place your sugar, eggs, oil, banana and vanilla in a bowl and give everything a good old mix until it is all well combined.
  3. In a separate bowl add the cinnamon, flour, bicarb and salt and give everything a good mix. Add to the first bowl with the banana mix a third at a time and mix through each time until you see no streaks of flour in the batter.
  4. Chuck in the carrots and walnuts and stir through until everything is well combined and evenly spread throughout the batter.
  5. Grease and line two 20cm cake tins and divide the batter between them. Place both tins on the same shelf of your oven if you can and bake for 20 minutes or until our good old friend the skewer comes out clean when inserted. If you can't fit both in at the same time bake in two batches so that you can get a nice even bake across the two cakes.
  6. Once baked remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tins before turning out onto a wire rack.
  7. Whilst the cakes are cooling you can prepare the frosting. Add the icing sugar, butter and vanilla into a bowl and beat together until everything comes together 
  8. Beat in the cream cheese as gently yet as quickly as you can so that the frosting doesn't become to runny. Leave to one side until your cake has fully cooled.
  9. Level the top of one of your cakes before spreading on a layer of the frosting. Place the second cake on top and spread the remaining frosting over the top and sides of the cake.
  10. For decoration sprinkle over a layer of cinnamon and place on some whole walnuts around the edge of the cake.

Spoil yourself to a big massive slice with a huge mug of tea and you are in pure cake paradise. I proper piled on the frosting on my cake. We all know that that's the best bit really and make sure that you get some of those walnut pieces too. You can serve straight away if you like although I prefer the frosting to be quite firm so I would place it in the fridge for a couple of hours or so. The cake keeps for a good 3-4 days too so it's great to make in advance ready for cutting up at afternoon tea the next day.

You'll defiantly go banana's for my carrot cake. Give a it a whirl this weekend!

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