Easy Carrot Cake product reviews

I love carrot cake but it is one thing I have never baked myself....I have a friend that makes it all the time so I just tend to visit her a lot...haha. But when I came across this recipe I thought to myself surely it can't be that easy!!? So anyway I had all the ingredients needed to make this cake so I get started...and it is easy! I guess the hardest part of the whole preparation is the grating of the carrot, and that really wasn't hard just took some time to grate 3 cups.

I mixed the oil and eggs and added the sugar, threw in the carrot and at this stage the mixture started to look unlike any cake mixture I had seen before...chunky because of the grated carrot where I am used to seeing a smooth cake batter, then came the cinnamon and the aroma started to tickle my senses! Next the flour and baking powder and the batter still looked weird but smelled delicious....straight into the oven and a bit over an hour later the carrot cake was done!

Okay so not the best carrot cake I have ever tasted but granted it was my first time and I can only improve as I make it more times and yes I will be making more of this cake because it was simple to prepare and it is definitely edible! I like how I could still see the orange of the carrot in the cooked cake, and maybe I didn't leave it long enough in the oven and it was slightly undercooked but when inserted a skewer at 75 minutes it came out clean so on my next attempt I will leave it until the full 90 minutes maybe.

But in saying that the outer crust of the cake was beautifully cooked it was crunchy and caramelised to perfection, it added a nice textural element to the fluffy inside of the cake. I ate the first piece and was looking for the next piece!

I iced the carrot cake with a cream cheese vanilla flavour and this just topped the carrot cake off nicely...it almost tasted like the real thing! I will look forward to trying this recipe again, it will make for an excellent plate for our next staff shout.

I had been eyeing up this recipe as Carrot Cake is my favourite cake ever, so I knew I had to try out this recipe. The most appealing thing was that it was such an easy sounding recipe. The carrot cake recipe I have used in the past has grated orange rind and chopped walnuts and crushed pineapple and all sorts added so this was a good easy sounding recipe that I could whip up quickly.

The recipe was so basic meaning that it was really easy to follow. I had a dillema when I had started getting things prepared in that there were only two eggs in my fridge so I decided to half the recipe. It is always a bit of a gamble when doing this as to whether it will still turn out as some recipes don't work out as well if you half them. It did work out and tasted great but it didn't seem to rise very high even though I had made it in a much smaller tin to make up for the smaller quantity.

The cake was so moist and full of flavour as I had added muscovado sugar instead of raw sugar it was nice and sweet too and had a nice dark caramelly colour. It cooked really well and evenly I had to take it out before the 90 minutes because my oven is stuck on fan bake so doesn't take as long, but it went nice and golden on the top and sides with the middle nice and springy and moist.

In my opinion Carrot Cake should always be served with cream cheese icing, so I made a cream cheese icing for the top of this which really complimented the carrot cake and I put some chopped walnuts on the top too! I put the icing on too soon and it started to melt but it was supper time and I was hungry and it still tasted pretty darn good.

I have made this cake at least a dozen times for various occasions. It makes a nice birthday cake, BBQ-food cake or party cake.

Personally, I prefer the lemon icing, but have been told by plenty who I have passed this recipe on to that the cream cheese is the better option in general. I don't do cream cheese, so it's lemon for me. I have yet to try the Orange Zest icing. Same as lemon, just with orange.

In case you don't know... lemon/orange icing is easy. Take a bag of icing sugar. Pour about a third of it into a bowl. Add the juice and zest (the coloured bit of the skin, not the white pith, finely grated) of the appropriate citrus fruit, and mix well. Too much juice, runny icing that won't stick... not enough and you get extreme frosting, not icing. It's all crystal chunks... not good.

Be careful with the oil too... too much oil and the cake becomes heavy and greasy. Not enough can give a very dry cake. I got the proportions from trial and error by making small batches and baking muffins too. Cut the baking time down by half an hour.