recipe

Skinny Whole Wheat Carrot Cake Traybake Recipe

Posted by spaulyseasonalservings on

We had some carrots left over so I thought I would make a carrot cake. As it is mid-week I didn’t want a fattening version so I tweaked a recipe to my preferred ingredients and the result was a delicious moist and creamy carrot cake you wouldn’t know there was no butter or full fat cream cheese. Now I have been doing my blog for a while I’ve learnt that you can change some recipes to your preferred flour or sugar. We are trying to stay away from white sugar and flour at the moment as un refined products are natural and so much better for you. So far it has worked really well.

Ingredients

For the cake

  • 300g  soft light brown sugar
  • 250ml olive oil
  • 3 large eggs
  • 150g whole wheat flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 2 tsp ground mixed spice
  • a pinch of salt
  • 250g carrots, coarsely grated
  • 125g  pecans, chopped
  • zest of half an orange
For the syrup
  • juice of an orange
  • 20g golden caster sugar

For the frosting

  • 400g light cream cheese
  • 100g  icing sugar
  • finely grated zest and juice of an orange
  • pecan halves to decorate

Method

  1. You will need a 25cm x 20cm baking tin, greased
  2. Preheat the oven to 160C (fan)
  3. Mix together the sugar and oil using either an electric hand whisk or in the bowl of a free-standing mixer. Add the eggs and mix until smooth.
  4. Using a large metal spoon, fold in the flour, baking powder, mixed spice and a pinch of salt.
  5. Add the grated carrots, chopped pecans and orange zest and mix until thoroughly combined. Spoon into the prepared tin and bake on the middle shelf of the preheated oven for 40 minutes until golden and a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.
  6. Prepare the orange syrup. In a small saucepan, heat the orange juice and golden caster sugar until the sugar has dissolved and the liquid has reduced
    by one-third.
  7. Prick some holes in the warm cake with your skewer and spoon over  the warm orange syrup and leave until completely cold.
  8. To make the frosting, beat the cream cheese, icing sugar, orange zest and orange juice until smooth.
  9. Once the cake has cooled, spread over the frosting and scatter with pecan halves to serve. As you are using light cream cheese it will need to set in the fridge for about 15 minutes.

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