'Kitchen Sink' Carrot Cake!

MOIST.
NUTTY.
AUTUMNAL

MOIST.NUTTY.AUTUMNAL

  • Gluten-Free Option In Recipe!

The autumn nights are beginning to draw in, which to me means one thing: it’s peak baking season! Nothing beats heading home after work or returning from a crisp walk, switching on the oven and filling your home with the scent of cakes, biscuits or bread baking away!

For me, the biggest conundrum is where do you start? Something gingery and lightly spiced to warm you up? Something nutty with complex, roasted flavours? Something to take advantage of your recent veg patch harvest? Or how about all three?

I’m far too impatient to wait to experience all of my favourite autumnal baking staples, so I’ve thrown them all into one recipe: my ‘Kitchen Sink’ Carrot Cake!
Everything but the kitchen sink has been lobbed into this cake, from pecans and orange, to a blend of spices with marzipan! Beautifully moist with complex flavours that change with every bite, you won’t be disappointed if you are looking for a celebration of the fall season!

In a hurry? Then here’s your recipe!

If you like to see some more tips and tricks, then scroll away for a bit of light reading!

'Kitchen Sink' Carrot Cake
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'Kitchen Sink' Carrot Cake

Recipe by Tom FletcherCourse: Autumnal Treat!Cuisine: CakeDifficulty: Easy
Servings

12

servings
Prep time

1

hour 

15

minutes
Cooking time

30

minutes

If you'd like a recipe to encapsulate autumn, then this is the one for you! There's plenty of prep involved in this recipe, but the bake itself is super simple and pretty foolproof, so the end result should be worth the time you spent toiling!
Of course, if you don't fancy buying all of the nuts and spices, you are very welcome to experiment with your own flavours!

Ingredients

  • For the carrot cake:

  • 200ml vegetable oil

  • 200g light brown sugar

  • 4 medium eggs, beaten

  • 200g self-raising flour (for a gluten-free version, use 200g gluten-free self-raising flour, plus 0.5 tsp xanthan gum if it isn't already included in your flour blend)

  • 1 tsp baking powder

  • 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

  • 1.5 tsp ground mixed spice

  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon

  • 0.25 tsp ground cardamom

  • 175g carrots, peeled and grated

  • Zest of 1 orange

  • 3 pieces stem ginger, roughly chopped

  • 1 tbsp stem ginger syrup, poured from your jar of stem ginger

  • 200g marzipan

  • 100g pecans, roughly chopped

  • For the cream cheese frosting:

  • 100g unsalted butter, room temperature

  • 250g icing sugar

  • 1 tsp lemon juice

  • 150g full-fat cream cheese (I use Philadelphia)

  • For the candied orange zest:

  • Zest of 1 orange

  • 60g caster sugar

  • For the decoration:

  • 12 walnut halves

  • Equipment:

  • 2 x 8" round cake tins

  • Large round piping nozzle

Directions

  • For the sponges:
  • Preheat your oven to 180C / 160C fan / Gas Mark 4.
  • Grease two 8" round baking tins and line the bases with baking paper.
  • Add the oil, sugar and eggs to a large mixing bowl and whisk them together until the sugar has dissolved.
  • Sift in the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and spices, then gently whisk together to combine.
  • Use a box grater to grate the marzipan into ribbons.
  • Add all of the remaining cake ingredients into the bowl and fold them into the batter until evenly distributed.
  • Divide the batter evenly into your tins, then place in the oven to bake for 30 - 35 mins, or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the cake. The top of the cake should also spring back when lightly prodded with a finger.
  • Let the cakes cool in the tin for 10 mins, before turning them out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.
  • For the cream cheese frosting:
  • Add the butter to a mixing bowl and beat until light and fluffy.
  • Sift in half of your icing sugar and beat until fully combined. Repeat for the remaining half of the icing sugar.
  • Pour in the lemon juice and beat into the frosting until fully combined.
  • Add the cream cheese to your frosting and gently fold it in until the mixture is smooth. Be gentle and try to avoid folding the mixture any more than necessary to prevent the frosting from becoming too runny.
  • For the candied orange zest:
  • Add the orange zest and caster sugar to a small bowl and stir together to coat the zest in the sugar. Set to one side until ready to use.
  • For the decoration:
  • Using a sharp knife, trim your walnut halves into heart shapes by slicing two "corners" off of each one. You are looking to have one end tapering down into a point, while using the natural shape of the other end of the walnut to form the rounded top of the heart.
  • Assembly:
  • Trim the tops off each sponge to achieve a flat top, then place one of the sponges onto your presentation plate / cake board / cake stand.
  • Place your frosting into a piping bag fitted with a round piping nozzle and pipe a ring along the edge of the sponge. Fill this ring with further frosting and smooth it out into a flat layer.
  • Place the second sponge top-down onto the first, before piping and spreading a layer of frosting to cover the top of the cake.
  • Scatter the candied orange zest in a ring around the perimeter of the cake and place the walnut halves on top, evenly spaced around the cake!

Pick n Mix

As you can tell from the recipe, when I say this cake includes everything but the kitchen sink, I really mean it! However, if all of these ingredients are a bit beyond your budget, or you just don't fancy all of the preparation, then don't fret! The truly essential ingredients of this recipe are those you'd typically find in an oil-based cake; oil (obviously!), sugar, eggs, flour and the raising agents (in this case baking powder and bicarb).
The remaining ingredients can be omitted and/or substituted out as you see fit, making this recipe easy to customise to suit any situation. The only tip I'd give for maximum satisfaction? Leave the carrots in, folks may find your carrot cake disappointing otherwise! 😊

Cracking the cream cheese frosting!

Cream cheese icing is something we are all familiar with and likely first tackled when we were at school, probably to wildly varying results! Although it's easy enough to achieve, there are a couple of rules you may want to be aware of!
Firstly, before adding the cream cheese to your butter mix, make sure you drain away any water. Excess water is the bane of any emulsion; as a fusion of two ingredients with high amounts of fat, the butter-cream cheese combo won't be able to absorb any significant amount of water, so any excess will pool in your bowl, leaving you with soggy, weeping icing!

The second tip is to beat the cream cheese into the mixture until just combined, rather than whipping the life out of it! We already incorporated plenty of air into our frosting when we initially whipped up the butter and overbeating the cream cheese will cause the icing to become runny. Should this happen to you, place the icing in the fridge to chill for as long as you can and check on the consistency after that; hopefully the butter in the icing will have firmed up enough to make your concoction pipeable!
If it's still a bit loose for your liking, then you may be able to thicken it up by adding more icing sugar, but to be honest it will make the icing a lot more sweet, likely cloyingy so, so it may be in your best interest to consider restarting at that point!

It's worth noting that overbeating of the icing most often occurs if you are struggling to get the cream cheese to blend smoothly into the butter, leaving you desperately trying to beat the lumps of cheese into order. If that tends to be a problem you have, try bringing the cream cheese up to room temperature before you add it. If the butter and cheese are at the same temperature, they will combine much more smoothly and may resolve your frosting fears!

Alternative Additions!

If you'd like to mix up the decor a little from the design featured here, then why not check out the article below? My Cutesy Carrot Cake guide will show you how to create candied peels and cute critters to adorn your cake!

Cutesy Carrot Cake!

Creating a cute cake doesn’t need to be complicated! Whether you’re baking a cake from scratch, or streamlining the process using a cake mix, there are a few really simple tricks you can use to amp up the style and take it from an everyday sponge to something with a bit more character!

In this guide, we will be using Creative Nature’s Carrot Cake Kit and running with the “nature” theme, adding candied carrot and orange peel alongside cute fondant critters desperate for a bite of your creation!
Let's go!

One carrot cake, with all of the aspects of autumn and flavours of fall!

I hope you enjoy your cake! If you’re social media savvy, tag me on Instagram at @toofarfletched with your creations!

-Tom 😁

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Tom

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‘Kitchen Sink’ Carrot Cake