Easy Loaf Tin Carrot Cake

 
This is a very easy carrot cake using ingredients you probably already have in the cupboard and fridge that takes very little time to throw together. It was really light and moist and absolutely delicious!

I didn’t actually realise it was a loaf cake until I was part way through the recipe but it makes baking and decorating it much easier. I made this while my baby daughter was having a nap, as my mother in law was having friends over the following day and had invited us to drop in and mentioned not having had time to make a cake so I wanted to help (though in the end she made a fantastic coffee cake as well!).

This recipe comes from the Abel and Cole Cookbook, which I bought (I think on a special offer) back in the days when I had a veg box delivered every week. These days it doesn’t seem worthwhile as my husband is very fussy particularly when it comes to veg and we wouldn’t get through even their smallest box, though now we’ve started weaning our daughter maybe it is something to look into again!

Abel and Cole has a similar recipe on their website where they say they spruced up the recipe from their first cookbook, which is the considerably simpler one that I made.

 
This is what I did:

You need:
185g sugar
180ml vegetable oil
2 eggs
150g self-raising flour
130g grated carrots
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon

for the icing:
175g cream cheese
175g butter at room temperature
225g icing sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla essence

Preheat oven to 180C. Beat the sugar, oil and eggs together until well combined, then fold in the flour. Stir in the grated carrots, the baking powder, bicarb of soda, salt and cinnamon.

Grease a loaf tin - I use PME Release A Cake Spray 600 ml - and pour in the cake mix. Bake for 30 minutes, testing with a skewer, then turn onto a wire rack to cool.





To make the icing beat together the cream cheese, butter, icing sugar and vanilla. Slice the cake through the middle (this wasn't in the original recipe but I decided to do it and loved it) and spread over one half of the cake and sandwich together then use the rest to cover the top of the cake.

 

 I'm sharing this with Baking Crumbs hosted by Only Crumbs Remain and CookBlogShare hosted this time by Monika at Everyday Healthy Recipes.

 

 

 

Lemon and Poppyseed Loaf Cake

Towards the end of my maternity leave - and right after my baby was born - I developed the famous 'nesting instinct' and decided to sort out my kitchen cupboards. It's been really helpful because now I'm short of time I can find everything more easily - I also made a fair bit of space by throwing out packets of food I'd forgotten I'd bought that were long out of date!

I found a packet of poppy seeds - still in date - which I'd bought for a recipe ages ago and never used. I was expecting neighbours around the following afternoon to meet baby S and thought a lemon and poppy seed cake - lemon is commonly paired with poppy seeds for some reason - would be a nice easy one to make if I did it as a loaf cake.

I used this recipe from BBC Good Food which turned out really well - very light and fluffy and surprisingly moist. In the end the neighbours had to cancel and reschedule for the following week so I ended up eating most of this cake myself!

The mixture looks quite odd when you add the poppy seeds:

Much better when the other ingredients are in.

Before baking in the loaf tin:

The baked cake, cooling on a rack.

 

 With the lemon glaze

Perfect with a cup of tea!

 

.I'm sharing this with CookBlogShare and Love Cake hosted by JibberJabberUK.