Ginger Carrot Cake with Lemon Cream Cheese & Saffron Frosting

Sharing is caring!

This is my first post for 2013, so even belatedly I wish all of you a Happy New Year.

As always I like to start my first post of the year with a sweet recipe, which symbolizes a sweet new year.

This carrot cake is delicious!  The result in a very moist cake without a lucious lemon cream cheese frosting on top which makes the cake irresistible.

To decorate the cake, I wanted to make some carrots, so I used green writing icing to make the leaves and red mixed with saffron to get the orange colour to make the carrots.  If you do not want to use saffron, you may mix red and yellow food colour in the icing.

Ginger Carrot Cake with Lemon & Saffron Frosting, recipe by Ivy

 Ingredients:

• 125 grams demerera sugar
• 4 medium eggs
• ¼ cup vegetable oil
• 300 grams all purpose flour
• 2 tbsp corn flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 300 grams carrots (2 cups finely shredded)
• 50 grams fresh ginger (about 2 tbsp grated)
• 1 tbsp orange zest
• ¾ tbsp cinnamon
• ¼ tbsp mixed spices
• 100 grams Greek yoghurt
• 50 grams walnuts chopped

Lemon-Cream Cheese Frosting

• 1 (200 grams) package cream cheese, at room temperature
• 30 grams (1heaped tbsp) butter
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 tbsp lemon zest
• 125 grams sifted icing sugar

Saffron Frosting

• 50 grams icing sugar
• 1 tbsp orange blossom water
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 0.25 grams Greek saffron with a little red colour (or mix red and yellow food colour) 

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 180^o C /350° F.
2.  Grease a 22 cm / 9 inch round cake pan and line with parchment paper.
3.  In a large bowl, sift together flour, corn flour, baking powder and baking soda.  Mix in spices and set aside.
4.  In your mixer bowl, beat eggs with sugar.  Add vegetable oil and yoghurt, shredded carrot, walnuts, orange zest and ginger and mix.
5. Add flour mixture and mix.
6. Pour batter into prepared pan.
7. Bake for 45-50 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.
8. Cool in pan for 10 minutes and remove from pan.

Decoration frosting:

Prepare frosting and set aside.   Add sugar in a bowl and add the orange blossom water and lemon juice, mixing until you have a thick paste.  Add colour and saffron and mix.  Cover with cling film and set aside until ready to use.

Lemon-Cream Cheese Frosting:

In a large bowl place all the ingredients and mix with a hand mixer until smooth.  Cover the cake with frosting.

Decorate and refrigerate for a couple of hours before cutting the cake.

Store cake or any leftovers in the refrigerator.

Other similar recipes:

Vegan Carrot Cake with Chocolate

Kopiaste and Kali Orexi,

Sharing is caring!