Jottage from Lancaster - Carrot Cake

Yesterday was cold - cold and a bit cloudy. Just the day to sit by the fire watching daytime TV and not doing much at all. Suddenly I had this thought that I had some carrots that needed eating up. And some eggs with a 'sell by' date a few days ago and a 'use by' date imminent. What made me put the 2 together and come up with carrot cake I don't know, but a River Cottage Everyday 'Treat' felt just right so I padded off away from the fire into the kitchen to seek out the recipe and make it.


I whisked up my just-in-date eggs with granulated sugar, as I didn't have caster. Then I added the oil and made this gorgeous frothy pale yellow concoction. Next I had to find the flour and to my dismay I hardly had any white self raising flour - least of all wholemeal. So I used the rest of the white and added some organic wholemeal plain flour and a couple of teaspoons of baking powder (out of date by some 2 or maybe 3 years...). So far so good. I had this thing that carrot cake should by spicy so I gaily sprinkled in plenty of mixed spice. Then I grated up the 3 carrots that had been languishing in the fridge and threw the lot into the oven and went off to watch an episode of Spooks that we had on DVD. The cake and Spooks ended at about the same time. Just perfect...



This episode made me think about the difference between home made and shop bought cakes. I'm sure that if I made this cake again it would be subtly, in not totally, different. And this one is interesting to eat. When it's cooked you pour melted honey on it, rather like a lemon drizzle cake, and this leaves it with a glazed and slightly sweet top. The cake itself isn't very sweet but is moist but with this little kick from the sweetness and slight crunchiness on the top. So every mouthful is unlike the last one. Shop bought cakes tend to be uniform and everyone you buy is just like the last one. You may love it once, twice, even three times, but then it gets just too samey. 


This is a really easy cake to make - I don't think it can fail, even with the wrong sugar, the wrong flour a few changes to the ingredients and some sadly not too fresh eggs and carrots. Only when I glanced at the recipe to find out how long it would take to cook did I notice that it was a cake for 12-14 servings. Whoops - there are only 2 of us!