This week The Great British Bake Off saw it's contestants battling with loaves that had to be made with untraditional flour, such as spelt, rye, potato or tapioca, for their signature challenge.  Then for the technical bake they were faced with making a Dacquoise (3 layers of coiled meringue, coffee custard and a hazelnut praline top.  All followed by the show stopper challenge which was to make a novelty vegetable cake that had to be dairy free.

Well, with 6 children keeping me busy, there was no way I was going to find the time to tackle the Dacquoise, no matter how much I would like to give it a try.
So I decided to make a dairy free vegetable cake.  I was a little stuck for ideas, and was never going to find the time to make a novelty cake, and so I stuck to one of the most popular vegetable cakes and gave it a little bit of a citrus twist.

Carrot, Orange and Pecan Cake with Orange Frosting




Recipe :

175g light muscovado sugar

175ml sunflower oil

3 large eggs lightly beaten

140g grated carrot (approx. 3 medium)

50g pecans (chopped)

grated zest of 1 large orange

175g self raising flour

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

1tsp ground cinnamon

half a tsp nutmeg

For the Frosting :

175g icing sugar

3 tbsp orange juice


METHOD :

1.  Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas Mark 4 and grease your cake tin.

2.  Tip the sugar into a large mixing bowl, pour in the oil and then add the eggs.  Stir in the grated carrots,     pecans and orange zest.

3.  Mix together the flour, bicarbonate of soda and the spices and then sift into the bowl.  Lightly mix all of     the ingredients together until everything is combined. The mixture should be soft and almost runny.

4.  Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 35-40 minutes until it feels firm and springy.
Cool the cake in the tin for 10 minutes before removing it.

5.  Beat together the icing sugar and orange juice until smooth to make your frosting. The frosting should be   runny which will enable you to drizzle as much as you would like on to your cake.


I used a round tin for this cake, but a square tin would work just as well .... although, a word of advice.
When baking my cake I used a non-stick tin, and greased the tin as well, but my cake still stuck which caused it to break when I removed it from the tin.
To stop this from happening use strips of greaseproof paper to line the tin so that it is easier to remove once baked.



Also, I have used pecans for my recipe as carrot cake is Daddy D's favourite and he prefers it to be made with pecans.  If you are not a nut lover, or prefer a little bit more sweetness to your cake, then try replacing the pecans with raisins.

This week I am sending a big Thank You to Jenny and Helen (and the rest of the bakers) for their continued support, and words of encouragement while I was panicking about my broken cake.

The cake was lovely and moist, and stayed light as well.  Even though it looks messy because of the tin disaster, it still tastes really yummy.



They say the proof is in the eating .... so I guess they liked it!

Missy x