Carrot (Happy Birthday) Cake

Light, moist and heavily spiced, this cake is fantastic as a celebration cake. But equally its lack of fuss and effort means it can be your everyday speciality as well. Plus there's veg in it.. what's not to love!? I usually find that carrot cake recipes are a little lack lustre, I like big flavour..So I can assure you that this recipe wont disappoint your taste buds. 

Ingredients
175g soft light brown sugar
175ml ground nut oil
3 eggs
200g grated carrots
175g self-raising wheat flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

Icing
100g (Half a tub) low fat cream cheese, 50g of soft butter, 100g icing suger, 1 tbsp golden syrup, 1 tsp vanilla extract, zest of a lemon or a lime or both. A handful of chopped, toasted nuts, I like almonds & pecans.

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4/fan 160C. Oil and line the base and sides of a square cake tin with baking parchment. The easiest way to do this is to cut a strip the width of the tin and place in the tin so that it covers the base and 2 sides of the tin, (leaving 2 sides exposed). This will give you 2 sticky-outy ends to lever the cake out of the tin with.

Mix the sugar, oil, grated carrot and eggs in a large mixing bowl. 

Sift in the flour, bicarbonate of soda and spices. Mix until just combined evenly. The mixture will be fairly wet.

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 45 minutes to an hour, until it feels firm and springy when you press it in the centre. Cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then turn it out (you may need to run a knife around the edge of the unlined sides), peel off the paper and cool on a wire rack. (You can freeze the cake at this point).

Beat together the icing ingredients in a small bowl until smooth. Refrigerate it whilst the cake is cooling. Once the cake is completely cool, put it on a serving plate and splodge over the icing. Liberally cover in toasted nuts.