Thursday 5 March 2015

Recipe of the Week - Gluten free & Dairy free Carrot Cake

 

 

When I first set about making a free from carrot cake it seemed like a straightforward cake to adapt, and it was. After all, most carrot cake recipes use oil rather than butter and all that extra moisture could only be good for a gluten free cake.

 

I've added some orange to my cake as well and spent longer than was probably necessary debating with myself whether I should call it Carrot Cake or Carrot & Orange Cake! In the end I decided to stick with just Carrot Cake as it's more like a Carrot Cake with a hint of orange.

 

Anyway, onto the cake. I bake ours in a square brownie tin and it bakes in about 30 minutes. You could also bake it in a deeper round tin at a slightly lower temperature and for slightly longer if you wanted a deeper cake, or even in a loaf tin. It depends what you are after really. I find the depth of the squares from our brownie tin deep enough.

 

As this cake is dairy free, the topping is not the traditional cream cheese topping you often get on Carrot Cakes. There is a dairy free cream substitute available but none of us like the taste of it and so I top our cake with an orange flavoured butter icing.

 

Finally, if you want to make this with non free from ingredients it will work just fine. No need to adjust any of the quantities.

 

For the cake you will need:

2 eggs

140ml vegetable oil

Grated zest of one orange

200g brown sugar

300g grated carrot (about 4 medium carrots)

180g Doves Farm Gluten Free Self Raising Flour

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 tsps ground cinnamon

1tsp mixed spice

 

For the icing you will need:

50g dairy free margarine

200g icing sugar

4 tsps orange juice

 

- Preheat oven to 180C (160C if you are baking in a deeper tin) and grease & line your tin.

- Beat the eggs in a bowl and then add the oil and orange zest.

- Add the sugar and carrots.

- In another bowl mix together the flour, bicarbonate of soda and the spices.

- Add to the carrot mix and mix together well, just with a wooden spoon is fine.

- Bake for around 30 minutes (or longer if you are using a deeper tin)

- While the cake cools make your icing.

- Add all the icing ingredients to a bowl and beat together with a mixer until smooth.

- Spread over the cooled cake.

 

 

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