70s Inspired Retro Recipes: Carrot Cake With Cream Cheese Frosting
Who would have thought that the still very trendy carrot cake has been around for over 40 years! This 1970s favourite is still very much a part of our cake life now and is served in most coffee shops in one form or another.
Ingredients
For The Cake
- 175g soft brown sugar
- 175ml sunflower oil
- 3 large eggs
- 140g grated carrot
- 100g raisins
- zest of 1 large orange
- 175g self raising flour
- 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon grated or ground nutmeg
- A little butter for greasing
For The Frosting
- 110g softened butter
- 300g cream cheese, cold
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- 100g icing sugar
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas Mark 4
- Grease and line a 18cm square tin with baking parchment.
- Into a bowl add the sugar, oil, eggs, grated carrot, orange zest and the raisins. Mix thoroughly.
- Once mixed, sift in the flour, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon and nutmeg and mix well. The mix will look lumpy but softer and slightly runnier than normal cake mix.
- Pour the mix into the cake tin and bake for up to 40-50 minutes (keep checking it!) until the cake is spingy and firm in the middle. Leave cake to one side to cool enough to handle and then remove from tin, peel off baking powder and leave on a wire cooling rack to cool further.
- To a clean bowl, add the butter and beat until fluffy, add the cream cheese (this must be cold and straight from the fridge) and the vanilla extract and mix. Sift in the icing sugar and mix gently until fluffy. Spread over the top of the cake.
- Serve and enjoy!