Carrot and pistachio cake

For my first blogpost I'm posting a cake I made for work this week, to celebrate St. Patricks Day. Or so was my rationale for making a cake mid-week anyway. It's a recipe from BBC Good Food, where I find a lot of good cake recipes, and I decided to half it to not be too overwhelming for a Tuesday. I also put it in a smaller tin (7inch/18cm) to make it look neater. I switched walnuts for pistachios to keep to a green theme, and added green food paste colour to the icing. Both of these are optional for an everyday cake of course, like an un-St.Patricks Day Wednesday.

Carrot and Pistachio cake

Time: About 2 hours

Oven: 160C/325F/Gas 3

Tin: 18cm/7inch

Ingredients

For the carrot cake

200ml vegetable oil

200g plain flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

275g sugar

3 free-range eggs

1/4 tsp salt

1 3/4 tsp ground cinnamon

260g carrots, grated

75g shelled pistachio nuts, chopped

Handful pistachios for decoration

For the icing

150g caster sugar

100g/3½oz butter, softened

200g/7oz cream cheese

(This is enough to ice the entire cake)

Preparation method

For the carrot cake

Preheat the oven to 160C/325F/Gas 3. Grease and line a 18cm/7in cake tin. Mix all of the ingredients for the cake, except the carrots and pistachios, together in a bowl until well combined. Stir in the carrots and pistachios.

Spoon the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 1 hour 15 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Remove the cake from the oven and set aside to cool for 10 minutes, then carefully remove the cake from the tin and set aside to cool completely on a cooling rack.

Meanwhile, for the icing, beat the cream cheese, caster sugar and butter together in a bowl until fluffy. Spread the icing over the top of the cake with a palette knife. Decorate with pistachio nuts.