Baking for Nightshift- Carrot Cake for a Crowd

For night shift last night I thought I would make this carrot cake from Annabel Langbein's new book 'Free Range in the City' and I thought I would fancy up the cream cheese icing by piping it on the cake rosette style. The cake is a huge 25cm and fed us all happily. In fact it lasted only an hour or so before it was all gone. The icing melted a little after I piped it before I whipped it into the fridge before I left for work. It still looked really lovely though especially for something so easy to do. This cake was delicious! I will definitely make it again and because of it's size it can feed a huge amount of people. If you have a food processor it hardly takes any time at all to make. But you can also put the ingredients into a mixer if you don't have a food processor.


Carrot Cake for a Crowd


1 c neutral oil (I used canola oil)
2 c raw or white sugar
4 eggs
1 c wholemeal flour
1 c plain flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp ground ginger
3 c grated carrot (about 3 medium carrots)
2 tsp baking soda
1 Tbsp orange juice
1/2 c raisins (optional)
1/4 c chopped walnuts (optional)


Preheat the oven to 160 C. Grease and line with baking paper a 25cm cake tin.


Place oil, sugar and eggs into a food processor and whizz to combine. Add the flour, spices, salt and carrot and pulse to combine. Don't overmix. Mix the soda into the orange juice and pulse into the mix. Add in the walnuts and raisins if using (I did and it made a great cake even better).


Put into the tin and bake about an hour until cooked. Cool and ice.


Cream Cheese Frosting


75g butter, softened
250g cream cheese (not lite or spreadable)
finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
4 c icing sugar.


Process everything. It may need to go into the fridge for a while to firm up before you put it onto the cake.