Carrot Cake

I have baked this Mary Berry cake with both ordinary self-raising flour and gluten-free self raising (just add slightly extra baking powder), and it's gone down really well with everyone. The original recipe calls for 100g of grated carrot & 2 ripe mashed bananas, but I prefer to increase the carrot & reduce the banana otherwise the carrot flavour is overwhelmed by the banana.

We prefer to top with a vanilla buttercream icing, because you just can't beat it but the original recipes suggests a cream cheese frosting.

Ingredients:

225g self-raising flour
2 level teaspoons of baking powder
150g light muscovado sugar
50g chopped walnuts
125g grated carrots
2 small/1 large ripe banana mashed
2 large eggs
150ml sunflower oil

For the cream cheese frosting:

175g full-fat soft cheese
50g softened butter
100g sifted icing sugar
a few drops of vanilla extract
walnut halves to decorate

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 F/Fan 160 F/Gas 4. Grease a 20cm deep round cake tin and base line with baking parchment.

2. Measure all the ingredients for the cake into a large bowl and beat well until thoroughly blended and smooth. Turn into the prepared tin and level the surface.

3. Bake in the pre-heated oven for about 50-60 minutes until the cake is well risen & shrinking away from the sides of the tin. Leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes, then turn out, peel off the parchment and leave to cool.

4. For the topping, measure all the ingredients except the walnuts, into a bowl or food processor and mix until smooth. Spread over the top of the cake and decorate with walnut halves.

5. If using the cream cheese frosting, chill a little before serving, and store in the fridge.