Carrot Cake

My dads finally agreed to us adopting a cat. We finally went in to the veterinary clinic to take a look at the cats and kittens. No more Persians just Omani bin cats, a lot cuter and a lot more fun. Hopefully I shall have new cat by the end of the week :D

In other news my friend Nuzha was in town. We used to bake and cook together a lot when we were younger, so it was nice having her back here. She used to make a mean cookie cake that she seems to have conveniently lost the recipe for :P Stop hiding it from me Nuzha!!

Unfortunately she was not in here for long and we couldn’t really cook together. I did however make her some carrot cake muffins; she always has been the green tea drinking, calorie counting healthy one, so it was appropriate.

Carrot Cake

• 1 cups sugar
• 1/2 cups vegetable oil
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 cups grated carrots
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 cup dried and chopped prunes
• 1/2 cup chopped hazelnuts

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius

Beat together the sugar, oil and vanilla in a large mixing bowl. Beat in the eggs 1 at a time.

Sift the flour, cinnamon, baking soda and salt and slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet.

Add the carrots, prunes and hazelnuts to the remaining flour and mix well. Add to the batter and beat slowly till combined.

Scoop the batter into 9 large muffin cups until 3/4 full and bake for 20 mins or until a cake tester comes our clean. Cool on rack before frosting.

Now I know carrot cake is generally frosted with a cream cheese icing but I have been eating A LOT of cream cheese frosting lately. I wanted something lighter. So I decided to make an orange buttermilk frosting.

Orange buttermilk frosting

• 1/4 cup softened butter
• 8 oz. powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 4 Tbsp buttermilk
• 1 Tbsp grated orange zest

Beat butter at medium speed until creamy.

Gradually add add the sugar until blended, followed by vanilla, buttermilk and orange zest.

Increase speed and beat until smooth.