Spiced Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

My mouth is watering just reading that title… Spiced Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting? AMAZING! I don’t think carrot cake gets the credit it deserves – it´s just so good! Probably one of my all-time favourites!😍😋

This spiced carrot cake is what some people would call a hug on a plate. Lovely warming spices, in a delicious cake and finished with a sweet cream cheese frosting. Yum! The cake is perfect to serve alongside a nice cuppa in the afternoon, and it´s also perfect for an upcoming Easter brunch!

If you are wondering why I was in the garden…

Haha, apologies if the pictures seem a bit strange in this post, but I made this cake at my Grandma´s house. It´s incredibly dark in the house, so I had no other option than to go outside, sit on the grass and take the pictures in her garden…🤣

How do you make this Spiced Carrot Cake?🥕

This spiced carrot cake is slightly different to my Ultimate Carrot Cake Traybake recipe. That carrot cake uses mashed banana for natural sweetness and is still one of my favourite recipes to date!

But this spiced carrot cake is truly out of this world – It´s super moist (apologies to people who hate that word) and absolutely PACKED with spices! If you are into that kind of thing – then this is the spiced carrot cake for you!
If you like spiced cakes, you could also check out this Spiced Pumpkin Cake!

Simply swap out ingredients you don´t like…

This cake contains both raisins and walnuts for that extra bit of flavour! If you don´t like one of those ingredients, just add a little more of the other instead. Or leave both out completely – I´d definitely recommend adding the nuts though for that little bit of extra texture! If you are not a fan of walnuts, you could use pecan nuts instead.

Orange Cream Cheese Frosting – The Best Idea Ever!

The orange zest in the cream cheese frosting is an amazing addition! Can´t believe I haven´t done it sooner! It just adds that certain je-ne-sais-quoi, as the French would say! That little something extra that just takes it to the next level!

The icing is so yummy – I could eat a whole bowl of it! If you do have some left over, just serve a dollop of the icing with a slice of the spiced carrot cake, or spoon it on top of other plain biscuits or something (my grandma put it on some ginger biscuits). OR, just eat it straight from the bowl – I won´t judge!

More Easter Recipes🐣💐🐰

• Easy Lemon Drizzle Cake Traybake
• Spiced Carrot Cake with Orange Cream Cheese Frosting
• Classic Fruit Scones with Orange Zest
• Chocolate Easter Egg Cupcakes
• Mini Egg Chocolate Brownies
• Mini Egg Cookies | Easter Baking Recipe
• Red Onion and Balsamic Soda Bread
• Lemon and Poppy Seed Drizzle Cake
• German Nusszopf | Sweet Nut and Chocolate Loaf | German Baking Classic
• Cheddar Cheese and Chive Scones
• Seeded Sourdough Loaf
• No-Bake Lemon Cheesecake with a Ginger Nut Base
• Caramelised Onion and Thyme Sausage Rolls
• “Laugenbrezeln” | Pretzels | Classic German Baking Recipe
• Crusty Sourdough Loaf | Homemade Sourdough Bread
• Homemade Mini Pork Pies
• Hot Cross Buns | Classic British Easter Recipe
• Lemon Yoghurt Cake

Spiced Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Recipe

Ingredients:

FOR THE SPICED CARROT CAKE

• 2 medium eggs, beaten
• 140ml vegetable oil
• 200g light brown sugar
• 300g carrots (about 3 medium), grated
• 100g raisins
• 100g walnuts, roughly chopped
• 180g self-raising flour
• 1 pinch salt
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp mixed spice
• ½  tsp ground nutmeg
• ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

FOR THE ORANGE CREAM CHEESE FROSTING

• 1 orange, zest only
• 175g full-fat soft cheese, at room temperature
• 50g butter, at room temperature
• 125g (maybe a little more) icing sugar, sifted
• 1tsp vanilla extract

YOU WILL ALSO NEED

• 2 x 20cm round sandwich tins
• 1 palette knife
• A few extra walnuts or sugar carrots, to decorate (optional)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 160°C. Lightly grease the two sandwich tins and line the bottom with baking paper.
2. Put the flour into a large mixing bowl and add in the walnuts and raisins. Toss them in the flour until coated to prevent them from sinking to the bottom of the cake when its baking.
3. Add in all the remaining cake ingredients to the bowl. Beat with an electric whisk or wooden spoon (there really is no need to dirty the electric whisk…) until all the ingredients are well combined. The mixture is fairly wet – so don´t worry!
4. Equally divide the mixture between the two prepared tins (weigh the mixture if you want to be exact).
5. Bake in the middle of the preheated oven for 25-30 minutes, until the cakes start shrinking away from the sides of the tin and an inserted skewer or toothpick comes out clean.
6. In the meantime, prepare the orange cream cheese frosting. Add the orange zest, room temperature butter and cream cheese and vanilla extract to a bowl and beat until smooth. Sift in about half of the icing sugar, mix, then add the remaining icing sugar. If you feel like the icing is far too runny or not sweet enough, you can add a little more icing sugar.
7. Chill the orange cream cheese frosting in the fridge to firm up until needed.
8. Remove the finished cakes from the oven and leave them to cool on a wire rack in the tin for about 10 minutes. Then carefully remove them from the tin, peel of the baking paper, and leave on the wire rack to cool completely.
9. Once the cakes have completely cooled, if the cakes have baked a bit unevenly, level the surfaces of the cakes by cutting off some of the top with a sharp knife (and then eat the offcuts!!!).
10. Place one of the cakes on the serving plate and spread over half of the orange cream cheese frosting. Place the other cake bottom side up (so that you have a nice, flat top) on the first cake and spread on the remaining cream cheese frosting. You can either just cover the top or also the sides if you like.
11. Finish by decorating the cake with a few whole or chopped walnuts, sugar paste carrots or any other decoration of your choosing.