Carrot cake with orange cream cheese frosting

Carrot cake is one of my colleague's favourite cake. I kept promising to make one but I couldn't find my grater so I bought one but was then too busy to make the cake. Anyway, I finally got round to it and she declared this the best carrot cake she's eaten! It's a simple mix all in one recipe which had the right balance of spice, nuts, raisins and carrots. I think the olive oil added to the flavour and smoothness of the cake - I remember using it for an apple cake previously and decided to give it a try here. The icing on the cake (literally) was the orange cream cheese frosting. 

I'm entering this to Tea Time Treats hosted this month by Kate from What Kate Baked and co-hosted by Karen from Lavender and Lovage. The theme this month is layer cakes and this 2 layer cake will do nicely. 

I'm also sending it to Made with Love Mondays hosted by Javelin Warrior as this cake is made from scratch and with plenty of love. 

And finally to Credit Crunch Munch hosted by Anneli from Delicieux this month. The challenge was created by Helen from Fuss Free Flavours and Camilla from Fab Food 4 All. This is a great recipe if you have leftover ingredients to use up as you can vary the fruit and nut mix of the recipe and if you're anything like me, you'll always have a carrot or two in the fridge!

wholemeal flour, olive oil, raisins, muscovado sugar, ground cinnamon, ground mixed spice, orange, cream cheese, pecans, carrots. 

 adding carrots, chopped roasted pecans and raisins to the mix

 ready to go in the oven

 2 layer cake

For the carrot cake

150ml olive oil

150g muscovado sugar 

3 eggs

220g wholemeal flour

1.5 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon mixed spice

zest of 1 orange

100g raisins

250g carrots, peeled and grated

100g pecans, toasted and roughly chopped

For the orange cream cheese frosting

300g cream cheese

50g butter

150g icing sugar

zest of 1 orange

1-2 tablespoons fresh orange juice (depending on consistency of icing requred)

• Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease and line 2 x 18cm sandwich tins. 
• In a large bowl, whisk the olive oil, sugar and eggs until the sugar has dissolved and the eggs are slightly fluffy. 
• In a separate bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, bicabonate of soda and spices and add to the egg mixture.
• Add in the remaining ingredients and mix well. 
• Divide the mixture evenly between 2 tins (I usually weigh them to get even sized cakes)
• Bake for approximately 25-30 minutes or until the cake springs back from the edge and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. 
• Allow to cool in the tins for 10 minutes before turning out to a wire rack to cool completely. 
• Meanwhile make the frosting by beating all the ingredients in an electric mixer until smooth.
• Sandwich the cakes with frosting and spread a thick layer on top of the cake.
• Decorate with orange zest as shown or pecan nuts.