Today is my husband’s birthday so I wanted to celebrate by making a letter H cake which is his initial. He requested carrot cake with classic lemon cream cheese icing. I am currently playing around with gluten free baking and this cake worked out so well with the Bakels gluten free flour blend. I would definitely recommend it as the texture was so moist and fluffy. Some vibrant strawberries and flowers to decorate along with some gluten free chocolate raspberries.
Ingredients:
Carrot Cake
– 4 eggs
– 2 C white sugar
– 1 cup oil
– 3 C carrot, grated
– 2 C gluten free flour (I used Bakels)
– 2 t cinnamon
– 1 t mixed spice
– 1 t ground ginger
– 1/4 t salt
– 2 t baking soda
– 1 T orange juice
Lemon Cream Cheese Icing
– 75g butter, softened
– zest and juice of 1 lemon
– 4 C icing sugar, sifted
– 250g cream cheese
Decorating
– strawberries
– fresh flowers
– Allen’s bites chocolate raspberries
Method:
- Preheat oven to 160 °C. Line a rectangle cake tin with baking paper.
- Place eggs, sugar and oil in an electric mixer and beat to combine.
- Add carrot, flour, cinnamon, mixed spice, ginger and salt. Mix until just combined.
- Dissolve baking soda in orange juice and fold into cake mixture.
- Transfer mixture into prepared tin and bake for 40 minutes. Cake is cooked when a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
- Cool in cake tin for 15 minutes before transferring to cooling rack to completely cool before icing.
- Make a template for the letter H out of A4 paper to use as a guide to cut your cake. You could use whatever letter you wish for this step. Place template on cake then cut out the two small rectangles to create an H shaped cake.
- 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.
- Slice strawberries in half lengthwise. Arrange strawberries, raspberry chocolates and flowers randomly on the cream cheese icing filling all the gaps.
