carrot cake – recipe by mary berry
just love the taste of this particular carrot cake. love the addition of banana (or babana as my children sometimes will remember we called it) and what it does to this already moist cake. enjoy! and thanks to mary berry …. from way out here in malaysia!!!
CARROT CAKE
makes 1 x 8″ cake
INGREDIENTS
8 oz self-raising flour
2 t baking powder
5 oz light muscovado sugar
2 oz walnuts, chopped
4 oz carrot, grated
2 ripe bananas, mashed
2 eggs
5 fl oz sunflower oil
FOR THE TOPPING
6 oz low-fat soft cheese
2 oz soft margarine (i just use butter)
4 oz icing sugar, sifted
a few drops of vanilla essence
walnut halves to decorate
METHOD
preheat oven to 180 deg C/350 deg F. grease and base line an 8 ” deep round/sq cake tin (or 2-3 loaf tins) with greased grease-proof paper
Mesure all the ingredients into a large bowl and mix well until thoroughly blended and smooth. turn into the prepared tin, and level the surface.
bake in the pre-heated oven for about 50-60 min (less if using smaller loaf tins – test after about 35 min?) until the cake is well-risen and shrinking away from the sides of the tin. allow to cool in the tin for a few ninutes before turning out and leaving to cool completely on a wire rack.
for the topping, measure all the ingredients, except the walnuts, into a bolw, or into a food processor, and mix well until smooth. spread over the top of the cake, swirling the top with spatula for a decorative effect. decorate the top with the walnut halves. chill a little before serving, and store in the fridge as the topping is soft.
note to bel… i would use loaf tins lined with greaseproof paper. you can buy aluminium ones, comes in packages of 3 or 4. you can eat some then freeze or give away the rest. foil tins can be reused if you line them first and then try not to mis-shape them when washing.
good luck, let me know how it turns out when you try it out. may add raisins, esp if your brother is around
it didn’t turn out that well lah i was rather disappointed. my carrot cake tak laku!!!!!!!! i dunno why also…it was dry and heavy…used multi purpose flour, was that why? and maybe i didn’t mix it well enough???? just used light brown cane sugar cos no muscovado…and used pecans instead of walnuts…the raisins made it semi-okay though
whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
and it didn’t really bake evenlyyyy
disappointed.
i think that i didn’t inherit the baking gene lah… my cooking is a little more intuitive and better…
on another note, spinach dip and olive canapes (even though they turned out a little different, not sure why) were v successful! but still got leftovers..
you needed to use self-raising flour. that was prob the problem. try again with self-raising flour. did you add the baking powder? without the s-r flour, you would have needed more raising agents. cake heavy cos not raised enough?
don’t be discouraged. try again. muscovado sugar better but not abs. essential, i guess. could use a mix of light and dark brown sugar. see why i carried ab. 4 kg of musc. sugar around about 4 blocks in london?
love you……and am sure everyone else does too for having tried. what about serving brownies? did a demo for susan and aska fri and they served them sunday……almost finished (aska saved 3 pcs) before the bride and groom (guests of honour) arrived. then susan quickly baked another batch…..they all oohed and aahed and now she’s way up there among the highly respected and admired bakers list!!!! bronwnies, girl! have you served them before?
as for leftovers for spinach dip…..it reallyis a huge amount…. mine have never finished in one serving … except maybe if i had 100 odd ppl at one xmas party. leftovers are good…enjoy them. there was prob too much to eat at your do.
so take care and don’t give up on the carrot cake.
remember my tales of failed brownies? always made them too thick which made them too dry…
but i might try again!
and yeah i didn’t know about adding extra raising agent until it was too late…the shop here didn’t have self-raising flour..booo
but yeah! the party was a success…we really made sooooo much food it was kind of ridiculous hehe…three of us made like three things each, and kat made a crepe-cake…and now the leftovers are almost finished…except tonnes of spinach dip! heh. next time i might make half a recipe, but then dunno what to do with the half packet of spinach left…
i’ll prob try the carrot cake again..what else can i try hm?
does anyone have the brownies recipe from Mary Berry’s Simple Cakes. It is brilliant and I have lost it and desperately need it for tomorrow! Any help much appreciated thanks, Sophie
hi sophie.. found 1 for you and posted it. hope that’s the right one.
Thanks to you stating ‘low fat’ soft cheese, my carrot cake topping was a disaster. When I checked the original Mary Berry recipe it said full-fat so if you are going to copy somebody else’s recipe, do it properly. It was so runny it would not have stayed on the top and no amount of icing sugar thickened it up. Thanks a lot for ruining a perfectly good cake.
hi annoyed! your comment left me quite stunned so i quickly checked the book and it did say low-fat soft cheese. did you check mary berry’s ultimate cake book, page 292? glad the rest of your cake was perfectly good. hope you cooled the cake completely before topping it….also, the topping will be soft so do refrigerate it before spreading, maybe.