How To: Carrot Loaf

Hey Everyone,

Oh yeah, Mr. Carrot.

          Today, I lost my carrot cake virginity. And boy, did this baby leave its mark on me. I was grating these carrots real hard and my fingers were swamped in their orange juices for a couple of hours after. So, if you want protection, better glove up!







Here's what you need:

- 1/4 cup of milk

- 85g plain flour

- 85g self-raising flour

- 82g brown sugar

- 1 tsp. of bi-carbonate soda

- 1 tsp. of cinnamon

- 1/2 tsp. of salt

- 125ml of sunflower oil

- 2 eggs

- Carrots (175g approx. two medium sized carrots)

- 85g of mixed/dried sultanas and fruit

        optional: Handful of crushed almonds and walnuts

Method:

1. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees Celcius (fan-forced if possible)

2. Line rectangular cake tin with baking paper

3. Grate carrots. You could use a machine processor thing but I don't have one so manual labor for me

4. Sift dry ingredients (plain flour, self-raising flour, bi-carbonate soda, cinnamon, brown sugar and salt) into medium mixing bowl

Sift me!

5. Dig a hole in the middle of the sifted dry ingredients and crack two eggs and oil and milk into the ditch

Egg-y hole

6. Mix eggs and sifted dry ingredients together using and electric beater until well combined. It should look like goo-y, silky and brown

7. Add carrots, walnuts/almonds and dried fruit mix into bater and mix until well combined. I used the electric mixer but, I think a spatula would be more appropriate to keep those air bubbles I need for the loaf to rise

Mixing with a spatula would have been smarter

Mixture should look something like this.

8. Pour mixture into rectangular cake tin. It should hit about half way

Hitting it half-way

9. Pop tin into oven for approximately one hour. To stop the cake from going too brown, you can cover the tin with foil after 30 minutes. Be sure to check the loaf at around 45-50 mins with the skewer incase it has already cooked through. Mine took 50 minutes but it depends on your oven.

10. Let carrot loaf cool for about 15 minutes and serve

Eat me. I'm so moist.

Focused incorrectly but, I love how you can see all the ingredients.

         This carrot loaf was indeed moist. We couldn't finish the whole loaf so I popped some in the fridge and even a week later, it was still as moist as the day I made it. Give this one a try because it was so simple to make if you love the carrot. Again, the original recipe (I put my take on SORTED's recipe which can be found here: SORTED's Carrot Loaf) had some other spices and double the amount of sugar but, I chose to halve the sugar because I felt the dried fruits that were incorporated really gave this loaf an added sweetness. But, feel free to experiment. I'll definitely making this one again and it was a great hit with my mummy who is my biggest inspiration.

        Hope you all are had a wonderful weekend.

Nibble away,

Jo x.