Here’s a delicious 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 by switching the spelt flour to sorghum flour or a gluten-free blend, so it’s a winner for all the family.

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Spiced Carrot Cake

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Prep Time 10

Cook Time 1

Total Time 1 10

Course Baking, Snacks & Treats

Servings people

Suitable for Special Diet (or adaptable) Dairy-free, Egg-free, Gluten-free, Nut-free, Vegan, Vegetarian

Ingredients

Cake

225 g Spelt Flour
1 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
2 tsp Baking Powder
120 g Coconut Sugar (or light muscovado)
2 Medjool Date (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)

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.

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.

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