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Home Cooked Recipe - Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese & Coconut Frosting

Yummy! I love carrot cake. Especially when it's covered in cream cheese icing (so wicked!) and sprinkled with shredded coconut.  Here's my recipe if you want to give it a go, it's very easy.

Serves 10-12.

Ingredients:
100g raisins or currants
1/3 cup orange juice ( I used breakfast juice)
3 large eggs
3/4 cup sunflower oil (I used 1/2 olive oil and 1/2 pumpkin seed oil)
1 firmly packed cup brown sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp mixed spice
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 cup desiccated or shredded coconut
1/2 cup walnuts
3 carrots (grated or if you have a Thermomix use that to grate them)
pinch of salt

Icing:  250 g cream cheese, 1/3 cup icing sugar, 1 tsp vanilla extract, 2 tbs lemon juice

Method:
Preheat oven to 180C. Grease and line the base of a 22cm springform cake pan.
Place raisins or currants in a small saucepan with juice and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer gently for 2-3 minutes until moisture is mostly absorbed. Set aside.
Place eggs, oil and brown sugar in a large bowl and beat for about 3 minutes until thick and creamy. (If using olive oil it will still be dark because of the colour of the oil)
Sift cinnamon, spice, flour, bi-carb soda and pinch of salt over the mixture, and fold it in with the coconut, walnuts, grated carrot and raisins/currants.
Spoon into the pan and bake for around 55-60minutes until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean. Cool in pan lightly covered with foil (makes it lovely and moist).

Icing: Beat all ingredients with electric beaters until light and fluffy, add more icing sugar to suit your taste if you want it sweeter. I don't add any extra as I like the tart taste of the lemon.
Cover top and sides of cake with mixture and sprinkle with shredded coconut or chopped walnuts if you prefer.


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