Delicious Carrot Cake!

Dates with Carrot Cake :)
 Now your thinking, she has nothing better to do than have a date with carrots :-) Its not so absurd as it sounds.. its just the best ever combination if your interested in carrot cakes. I try carrot cakes in every possible way, healthy ones, bland ones and really rich and delicious ones :-) I just love them and my experience so far is that they never go wrong. OK I take my words back.. I recently faced close to a disaster while baking the carrot cake.. We had a bake off competition in the office and I decided to bake my favourite cake with a lovely icing. I started off with the recipe, everything seem to go really well till I sent it to the oven. I had tried something which I had not done before and ended up making a little runny batter, but I will reveal the trick of handling it.

So if this has cheered you up to give it a go.. here is what you need:

Dry Ingredients:

1. 1 Cup Toasted Pecans / Walnuts.
2. 1 Cup Sulatanas
3. 5 nice whole some dates
4. 1 3/4 Cup finely grated carrots.
5. 2 Cups All purpose flour
6. 1 tea spoon baking soda
7. 1 1/2 table spoon baking powder
8. 1 cup soft brown sugar
9. 1 1/2 tea spoon Ground Cinnamon
10. 1 tea spoon mixed spice
11. 1/4 teaspoon salt

Wet Ingredients:

1. 1 Cup vegetable oil.
2. 4 medium size eggs or 2 medium size eggs and 1/2 cup buttermilk (I tried the later)
3. 1/2 pod of vanilla or 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract or 1 teaspoon of vanilla paste (try using a pod or paste, its a celebration of vanilla :)

Ingredients for Icing:

1. 225 gms of low fat cream cheese
2. 50 gms butter
3. 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract / 1/2 pod.
4. Zest of 1 orange.
5. 1 Cup Icing Sugar
6. Handful of toasted walnuts for garnish.

Lets get baking!

1. Prepare your baking tin. Most important, I have caught my self running around in a frenzy to find the right tin and lining it and all that hurry to put the batter in, trying to preheat the oven at the same time! It is crazy and I have come close to having a nervous breakdown :0) To avoid all that, start off with lining a 23x7 cm baking tin. I try and use a loose bottom tin, makes life easy. If you don't have one any other tin with equivalent dimensions is fine as far as you line it with a buttered parchment paper.
2. Pre heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
3. Mix all the dry ingredients well. Sift flour, baking soda and baking powder together. Chop the walnuts into small chunks , make sure the walnuts are toasted well, it makes a lot of difference to the taste. Cut the dates in fine pieces, mincing is also OK, but cutting them in small pieces gives a lovely bite to it. add the sultanas and mix everything well. 
4. Prepare the wet mix. Pour in the oil in a sizable bowl, helps you whisk well. Add the eggs, butter milk and vanilla paste. Whisk them together till they mix well. This might appear a little curdled but don't worry that is how it is supposed to look like.
5. Add the grated carrots to the dry mix.
6. Pour in the wet mix.
7. Mix everything thoroughly, make sure there are no lumps. Do not over mix.
8. When you are happy with the mix, transfer it to the tin that you have prepared earlier for baking.
9. The mix will look a little runny, but the way you bake it will give you excellent results.
10. Put the tin on the middle rack in the pre heated oven at 180 degrees Celsius for 20 mins. 
11. Turn the heating down to 140 degrees Celsius and bake for 40 mins.
12. Remove the cake from the tin and allow it to cool.

Prepare the icing:

While the cake is happily baking away put your feet up, enjoy an nice cuppa tea and get set for preparing the icing when there are about 10 mins left for the cake to bake. If you intend to serve the cake the same day, pour over the icing when the cake is still a little warm, the icing spreads itself evenly, you do not have to take any efforts. In my case I had to take the cake the next day for the competition, so I let it sit overnight and prepared the icing the following day. I put the cake in the oven for 10 mins on 120 degrees the next day to warm it up enough to spread the icing.

 Here's how you make it:

1. Beat the cream cheese, butter and icing sugar well.
2. Add the zest of 1 orange and vanilla paste and mix it well.
3. Pour the icing over a warm cake, garnish it with chopped toasted walnuts and serve it with a lovely cup of coffee or tea.

As for my competition, this cake turned out to be an award winner and I received a  lovely recipe book with some nice and simple recipes!