Our new favourite carrot cake recipe

I made this a couple of weeks ago and it was demolished within a few days - everyone loved it! The recipe came from a relatively new magazine called "Good to know recipes" which is a monthly recipe magazine - from the publishers of the IPC magazine family. I like it because the editors seem to be on a mission to provide down to earth value for money food! They have a website here.

So, the recipe.

It needs a 2lb loaf tin, lined (I use a liner from Lakeland in my loaf tins). The oven temperature is 180C or GM4.

It's very simple - put 175g SR wholemeal flour, 1tsp baking powder, 1tsp ground mixed spice, and a pinch of salt into a big bowl. Add in 100g raisins and 175g soft light brown sugar; mix all those around in the bowl.

Separately, mix together 150ml sunflower oil with 3 eggs. Grate and peel some carrots so that you have 250g to add to the cake. Then put the carrot in with the dry ingredients and give it a quick mix through. I then added the eggs and oil and gave it a thorough mix until everything was well mixed and there was no flour lurking anywhere!

This whole lot was then put into the cake tin and baked for about an hour. It smells gorgeous! The recipe recommends making a topping from 200g cream cheese beaten with 4 tbsp icing sugar and a couple of drops of vanilla essence. We spread that over the cake when it was cool and then kept the cake in the fridge. On the second occasion, I didn't bother with the topping and just sieved a tiny bit of icing sugar over the top and then was able to keep it in the cupboard in a cake tin. It was still a hit! The first time I made it, I didn't have any wholemeal flour in the house, so it was just normal white SR flour, and it was fine. I did lash out and spend over £1.30 on some Allinson's wholemeal flour for the second version, which did seem to make it a little more filling.