Carrot cake

An oldie but a goodie – carrot cake. Fabulous for an afternoon tea cake, and also good as a lunchbox filler. You can make this yummy cake in either a round tin or a slab tin. It freezes beautifully as well.

CARROT CAKE

Makes: 12 cake slices or lots of lunchbox-sized slices
Prep: 5 minutes
Cook: 1 hour

Ingredients

• 100ml of olive oil
• 200g / 1½ cups of brown sugar
• 4 eggs
• 200g (1½ cups) of carrot, peeled and grated
• 440g of tinned crushed pineapple, strained
• 2 cups (300g) of plain flour
• ½ tsp of salt (iodised)
• 1 tsp of baking powder
• 1 tsp of bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp of cinnamon ground
• ½ tsp of nutmeg, ground
• icing mixture or icing sugar

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 160˚C fan forced. Line the base of a 20cm round springform cake tin or 20cm x 30cm rectangular tin and grease the sides.
2. Mix the oil, brown sugar, eggs, carrot and pineapple together in a large bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, sift together the dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking powder, bicarb of soda, cinnamon and nutmeg).
4. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients using a fork (this helps to break up any lumps). Do not over mix.
5. Pour cake batter into the cake tin.
6. Cook for 40–50 minutes. Test with a skewer at 40 minutes. If it comes out clean it is ready.
7. Leave the cake to stand in its tin for 5 minutes, then remove from tin and leave to cool on a cooling rack.
8. Dust with icing mixture and serve.

TIP
Use the crushed pineapple in juice rather than syrup, as you can strain the juice into a jug and dilute with water and chill for a great kids’ drink later.