Carrot cake is pretty high up there on my list of favourite cakes. It is my husband’s birthday today so I whipped up this delicious cake to celebrate. This recipe is great because it makes quite a high cake which always looks nice. I love decorating cakes simply by adding chopped nuts, fruit and seeds. It looks effective and it quick to do.

Ingredients:
Carrot Cake
– 4 eggs
– 2 C white sugar
– 1 cup oil
– 3 C carrot, grated
– 2 C flour
– 2 t cinnamon
– 1 t mixed spice
– 1 t ground ginger
– 1/4 t salt
– 2 t baking soda
– 1 T lemon juice
– 1 C walnuts, chopped
– 1/2 C sultanas
Lemon Cream Cheese Icing
– 75g butter, softened
– zest and juice of 1 lemon
– 4 C icing sugar, sifted
– 250g cream cheese
Decorating
– chopped walnuts
– chopped apricots
– pumpkin seeds

1. Preheat oven to 160 °C.  Line a 23cm cake tin with baking paper.
2. Place eggs, sugar and oil in an electric mixer and beat to combine.
3. Add carrot, flour, cinnamon, mixed spice, ginger and salt. Mix until just combined.
4. Dissolve baking soda in lemon juice and fold into cake mixture with walnuts and sultanas.
5. Transfer mixture into prepared tin and bake for 1 hour 15 minutes but check on cake from 1 hour onward as each oven varies. Cake is cooked when a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
6. Cool in cake tin for 15 minutes before transferring to cooling rack to completely cool before icing.
7. For icing, beat together butter, lemon zest, lemon juice, icing sugar and cream cheese in electric mixer until smooth. Spread over the top of cooled carrot cake.
8. Sprinkle chopped walnuts, apricots and pumpkin seeds around the edge of the cake.