Gluten-Free Carrot Cake

After indulging in quite a lot of chocolate cake over the past few months, I've been craving something else as a tea time treat. Carrots are my silly dog's favourite snack and so we always have a stash in the house. Carrot cake is a dessert that I always order when a gluten-free option is available, however, that is rather rare to find unless I venture to the wonderful Sugar Daddy's gluten-free bakery in Edinburgh. I like my carrot cake with a lot of cinnamon, a hint of ginger and a tiny bit of citrus just to lift it a wee bit.

Gluten-Free Carrot Cake

Ingredient

150ml sunflower oil

150g light brown muscovado sugar

3 large eggs, lightly beaten

200g gluten-free self-raising flour

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

1tsp ground cinnamon

1/4tsp ground ginger

a pinch of salt

grated zest of 1 orange

200g carrot, peeled and coarsely grated

75g walnuts (or pecans), chopped

For the Icing:

250g full-fat cream cheese

250g icing sugar, sifted
50g butter

juice of one orange 

8 whole pecans

Method

1.  Preheat the oven to 180C/fan 160C/ gas 4 and grease and line the bases of 2 x 18cm sandwich tins.

2.  Place eggs, oil and muscovado sugar in a bowl and whisk until thicker and well-combined.

3.  Sift together the flour, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon, ginger and salt and then fold carefully into the batter.

4.  Fold in the carrots, walnuts and orange zest.

5. Divide between the two sandwich tins and bake for about 30mins -35 mins until golden brown, risen and a skewer through the centre comes out clean. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

6.  For the icing: Combine cream cheese, icing sugar and butter and whisk until well combined and smooth. Add orange juice a little at a time. Don't add all at once to avoid separation.

7.  Sandwich the two halves of the cake with a third of the icing and then ice the top of the cake with the rest of the icing. Decorate with the whole walnuts.

Enjoy!

C