Orange and Carrot Cake

Some cakes are very easy to make, this is one of them. I brought this over to a friend’s the other day, and although the instructions had been to bring chocolates it seemed to go down very well.

You could easily use cinnamon instead of cardamom, and ordinary white sugar instead of golden.

2 eggs

180g golden sugar

60g butter

120g flour (I used Dove’s Farm gluten free white flour)

1 teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon xantham gum

⅛ teaspoon ground cardamom

180g peeled carrots

zest of 1 orange

butter for greasing the tin

7 tablespoons icing sugar

1 tablespoon orange juice

Pre-heat your oven to 200^oC, and grease a 20cm round baking tin.

Place the eggs and sugar in a large bowl and whisk with an electric mixer. Melt the butter, and leave it to cool for a couple of minutes. Add the butter to the eggs and sugar, and whisk well. Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl, and sift these into the wet mix. Use the electric mixer again until you have a smooth dough.

Grate your carrots and zest the orange, and add these to the dough. Once all the ingredients are well mixed, pour the dough into a greased baking tin. Bake on 200^oC for about 30 minutes, until the cake is baked and a skewer comes out clean when you do the skewer test.

Remove the cake from the oven, and leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack. Leave the cake to cool completely.

When the cake is cool you can add the icing. Sift the icing sugar into a small bowl. Add the orange juice, a little bit at a time, and stir well. You may not need all the liquid, which is why it is useful to add a little at a time. It’s always easier to add more liquid than to rescue the icing when it has become too wet.

Pour the icing over the cake, and use a palette knife to spread it evenly over the cake. Leave it to set before serving.