Cinnamony-Coconutty-Carrot Cake!!! :)

I know I am posting alot of fruity cake type recipes at the moment - I hope this is ok with everyone! ;) The reason for this being is that my granny is over visiting us as we speak and she does needless to say love her fruit cakes ;) And here is the cake I made today - a scrummy moist carrot cake flavoured with a wee bit of coconut and a sprinkling of cinnamon! :)

Ingredients..

• 150 g coarsely grated carrot (I used 2 medium sized carrots. Top the carrots and remove the outer skin before grating them. Dont worry if the amount is a little abbove 150 g of course! :)
• 2 large eggs
• 125 ml sunflower oil
• pinch ofsalt
• 125 g self-raising flour
• 1 heaped tsp ground cinnamon
• 125 g light brown soft sugar
• 25 g dessicated coconut

Method..

• Preheat oven to 180c/160c fan. Grease a 20 cm square cake tin. Line the base with baking paper.
• Sieve the flour, cinnamon and salt into a bowl. Stir in the brown sugar. before you add the sugar, sift through it with your fingers to make sure there are no hard little clumps. Crumble these between your fingers so that they disintegrate into fine grains if you come across any.
• Beat the eggs lightly in a jug. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients. Add the beaten eggs and the oil. Mix well with an electric mixer for about three minutes until well blended. Pause the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl halfway through the mixing to assure it is all nicely incorporated.
• Using a large metal spoon, fold in the grated carrot and the coconut.
• Transfer to the prepared tin. Bake for 20 - 25 minutes, until risen, golden and slightly firm to the touch. 
• Cool in the tin and then cut into 12 (or 9 or 16, depending on how big or small you want them:) ) squares. Once cool , store in an airtight container, preferably in the fridge, and eat within three days. The carrot cake is so moist that it usually doesn't keep as long as other cakes might, especially in warm weather! So be sure to eat it up when it;s still lovely and fresh :)

Carrot, coconut, cinnamon...and a wee bit of ginger too. :)

These little guys were rustled up today in my spare time…well we have just had our first (hoorah!) long-awaited glut of carrots from the garden…but I’m afraid I wasn’t permitted to use THEM in the featured cupcakes above, oh no. You see carrots were on offer this week in Aldi, so in the fridge we already had tonnes of these wonderful orange vegetables, and then just today daddy comes in through the back door of the house with his arms full of homegrown ones. Which we are having later on for dinner, btw – so it was up to me to use up those ones in the fridge, some way. Well, what better way than carrot cake? But hang on – these are even better than carrot cake…light scrumptious little cupcakes packed full of grated carrot, ginger, cinnamon..and one of my alltime favourite ingredients…dessicated coconut.

Ingredients

About 2 - 3 carrots, depending on size: you need approx 150 g worth of grated carrot. 

110 g soft light brown sugar

6 tbsp sunflower oil

30 g dessicated coconut 

1 large egg

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

75 g self-raising flour

Pinch of salt

A little icing sugar for dusting

Method

 Line a muffin pan with 6 paper muffin cases. Preheat oven to 170/150c fan.

Sift the flour, bicarbonate, salt and spices into a small bowl.

Beat the egg in a separate bowl with a wooden spoon or electric mixer and add the oil and the sugar. Mix well once more until well blended.

Top and tail the carrots, peel and then coarsely grate them (ganache elf tip: prepare them just before you need them so you don’t need to worry about them going brown or storing in water to prevent that. ;)

Add the carrot, coconut, flour, bicarbonate, spices and salt to the egg mixture and fold in with a large metal spoon.

Carefully fill the muffin cases with the mixture (I usually pour straight from the bowl – but you can use a spoon if you would prefer…but the mixture is quite sloppy so be warned ;) ). Place the tray in the preheated oven and bake for about 20-25minutes, until well risen, light golden brown and springy to the touch.  

Leave in the tin for about 5 mins before removing carefully and placing on a wire rack to cool. dust with icing sugar before serving. They don't keep very long because they are so moist and are low in fat, so try to eat as fresh as possible - bit they should be fine kept in an airtight tin for up to four/five days. :)