I absolutely adore carrot cake! I mean, who doesn’t?! It isn’t overly sweet, the icing is divine, and the fact that there are carrots in it makes me feel a little less guilty about eating it! There is nothing worse than a bad carrot cake that’s too dense or over spiced. Having tried many recipes, this Avoca recipe is by far my favourite, and one that I make again and again. I usually make it in loaf tins (this recipe would make two), but I needed it for an occasion this time so I decided to try muffin style and it worked very well. I adjusted the spice mix this time too and thought it worked very well, but you could easily omit this element altogether if it’s not to your taste.
Ingredients (makes about 26 muffins)
400g caster sugar
4 eggs
400ml sunflower oil
400g self raising flour
400g carrots peeled and grated
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla essence
Icing:
175g full-fat cream cheese (Philadelphia- full fat works best)
50g unsalted butter (normal butter works fine if that’s all you have)
Juice and grated zest of 1/2 lemon
350g icing sugar
Method
1. Preheat oven to 170C
2. Line and grease the loaf tins or if making muffins put cases in the bun tins
3. Whisk sugar, eggs and oil together until thick and pale (using a food processor this takes about 5 minutes)
4. Add the flour, salt, ground ginger and cinnamon
5. Add carrots and vanilla essence and fold until combined
6. Pour the mixture into the muffin cases and bake for 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. If making loaves, bake for one hour.
7. Cool on a wire rack
8. Make the icing by beating all ingredients together. Spread on muffins and decorate with blueberries.
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