Here’s a delicious autumnal carrot cake spiced with warming cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. Lower in sugar and boosted with mixed seeds. It’s a doddle to make gluten-free, so it’s a winner for all the family.
Ingredients
Cake
- 225 g Spelt Flour
- 1 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
- 2 tsp Baking Powder
- 120 g Coconut Sugar (or light muscovado)
- 2 Dates (stone removed and diced)
- 120 g Carrots (peeled and grated)
- 2 Bananas (over-ripe, peeled and mashed)
- 50 g Mixed Seeds (eg. chia, flax, sunflower, pumpkin)
- 2 Eggs (beaten)
- 150 ml Sunflower Oil (organic preferred. Can use light olive oil)
- 30 g Dried Apricots (diced)
- 0.25 tsp Cinnamon (ground)
- 0.25 tsp Ginger (ground)
- 0.25 tsp Nutmeg (ground)
- 1 Orange (just the zest)
Icing
- 250 g Cream Cheese (organic preferred)
- 2 tbsp Icing Sugar (sifted)
- 0.5 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 0.5 Orange (just the juice)
Units
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 180 degrees (160 degrees fan).
- Grease and line a 20cm (8") cake tin or tray.
- Measure all of the ingredients into a large mixing bowl, mix together with either an electric mixer or wooden spoon. Pour into the prepared tin and level out the surface.
- Bake in the oven for 50–60 minutes until the top is a lovely golden brown and just beginning to shrink away from the sides of the tin.
- You can check whether it is fully baked by inserting a metal skewer into the middle of the cake, it should come out clean.
- Leave the cake to cool in the tin for a few minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to fully cool.
- Mix all the ingredients for the icing together. When cool, ice your cake and sprinkle over some extra orange zest to decorate.
Recipe Notes
Cook's Tip:
- Make sure your bananas are extremely ripe, the blacker the better. They give off the best natural sweetness and it will improve your cake hugely.
- The cake part is suitable from 12 months but keep the sweet icing for the over threes.
- Store in a cake tin for up to 4 days. Freeze the cake part for up to 6 months and decorate when defrosted.
Allergen Swaps:
- Gluten Free: swap the spelt flour for self-raising gluten-free flour and omit the bicarbonate of soda
- Dairy Free: swap cream cheese for a thick vanilla coconut yoghurt like Coconut Collaborative
- Egg-free: replace the two eggs with 14g (2 tbsp) of ground flaxseeds mixed with 80ml (5 tbsp) water.
10/10 this was delicious! Love a ‘throw it all in’ recipe and out comes a new favourite cake!
My fussy eaters actually loved it! Thank you Lucinda❤️