Carrot Cake

Do you have leftover carrots from Easter?  We bought a big bunch to lure our Easter Bunny this year... it seemed to work, the girls were left some lovely little treats! I wanted to use the remainder up with a good hearty carrot cake.  I have been meaning to bake one for some time now, so I searched my trusty hand written recipe book and found this.  No idea where it originally came but it was probably one handed down to me from Mum.   After the success of this - I can't rate it highly enough.  I love how moist and high it got and it wasn't overly sweet or too strongly spiced either.  It's not carrot cake to me unless it has cream cheese icing so if you are ready to indulge then paste it on generously and enjoy!

Ingredients:
3 cups self-raising flour, sifted
2 cups brown sugar
1/2 tspn salt
2 tspn baking powder
2 cups (blitzed) carrot
4 eggs
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 tspn vanilla essence
1 cup chopped walnuts
juice of 1 orange
1 tblspn grated lemon rind
1/2 tspn nutmeg
1/2 tspn cinnamon

Icing:
400g cream cheese
1 tspn butter
200g icing sugar
2 tblspns grated orange rind

Method:

• Heat the oven to 330'F/160'C.  Coat a large ring tin with butter.
• Using a hand beater or mixer, beat together the sugar and eggs, until combined.  
• Add all other ingredients gradually to the sugar and eggs.  Alternate the flour and juice/oil last.
• Bake for 50mins or until a knife comes out clean. 
• Allow to cool.
• You can slice the cake in half and use some icing across the middle or put it just on top.  I do on top only.  You could sprinkle a little additional walnuts on the top for presentation.