CARROT CAKE IS HEALTHY, RIGHT?

Last week I put my Betty Crocker socks on and got too work on my favourite cake of all; carrot cake. 

After heading to the shops to purchase the ingredients I realised it would have been a lot easier, not to mention cheaper to buy my own (or 10 in fact). However that would just be cheating and no where near as satisfactory. So I began my bake which consisted of:

150g self-raising flour

150g wholemeal flour

150g carrots (peeled and roughly grated)

125g soft light brown sugar

175ml sunflower oil

2 apples (peeled, cored and roughly grated)

3 eggs

1 egg white

1tsp baking powder

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

1tap ground ginger

18 pecan nuts

& for the cream cheese frosting

300g low-fat cream cheese

3tbsp icing sugar (sifted)

1tbsp cremefraiche 

1tsp vanilla extract

This recipe is from Lorraine Pascal's 'A Lighter Way To Bake' which is great if you are looking to bake variety of cakes, breads, savoury bakes and many more in a slightly healthier way! 

This recipe was so easy to make, for the cake it was literally a case of mixing all the ingredients in a large bowl (minus the pecan nuts) and dividing the mixture equally between two 20cm sandwich tins then sticking in the oven for 30 minutes on 180C! Make sure before you poor the mixture in you have lined and greased the sandwich tins, I used a light spray oil for this.

This is what the mixture look like before going in the oven, not so appealing to eye. Then again, neither are we before we've hit the heat! 

 And this was them after, looking gorgeously golden! To check they are definitely done it might be worth sticking a knife through the middle, the knife should come out clean, if not it may need an extra few minutes. 

To make the frosting, again it is just a case of mixing all the ingredients in a bowl and then popping in the fridge whilst the cake cools.

When the cake is completely cool you can remove them from their tins and place half the frosting in the middle and the rest on top like so.... 

The pecans are used to decorate and to add an extra bit of sweetness to the cake. After baking the cake I realised I actually had enough ingredients to make two batches so I made one for Monk and another for myself.

Here they are! 

I will just add that it is probably best stored in the fridge in an air tight container, I left mine on the side and it went dry and not so scrumptious within a couple of days where as Monkey kept hers in the fridge where it stayed fresh and moist. The recipe is actually for a carrot and apple cake but it's taste is not dissimilar to a carrot cake. Delicious and healthy bake... Try it for yourselves or as kind gesture to a friend who needs some cake in their life (we all do from time to time)!! 

Mwaaah x x x x x