So many Carrots... Recipe 3&4

Every week, due to my inability to leave the house and go grocery shopping with a 3 month old, I get the local milkman from Aussie Farmers Direct to deliver fresh veges, milk, bread and sometimes meat to my house. Aussie Farmers Direct is a free home delivery service providing fresh products that are 100% Australian owned and produced. Their main goal is to help the Australian farmer win the battle against the large multinationals by delivering a broad range of products direct to the consumer, cutting out the middle man like Coles and Woolworths, means products are delivered faster, fresher and straight to me making the humble farmer win in the long run.

It's the best decision I have ever made and now there is absolutely no excuse now not to cook food everyday.

Every Thursday and Friday I receive my deliveries. Friday is generally milk, cheese and meat, but Thursday, well, I am always excited for Thursday deliveries as I get a box of seasonal vegetables.

Carrots and Zucchini's apparently must be in season at the moment! As the last few weeks I have received so many of both that literally its the first thing I see when I open my fridge door, leading to inspiration for my first recipe for 2011 - Carrot Cake.

The below recipe is adapted from the Edmonds Cook Book - a Classic New Zealand recipe book that has been around for 90 years. There are some quantities I have changed and ingredients I have added and omitted after a bit of research. The original recipe stated you needed pineapple as well, but I did not have it in the house.

Jossy's Carrot Cake

3 Eggs
1 cup of Oil (I used virgin olive oil- nothing too pungent)
2 cups of Flour (NOT self-raising)
1 cup Sugar
3 tsps Baking Soda
1 tsp Cinnamon
1 tsp Nutmeg
3 cups of Carrots
1/2 cup chopped Walnuts
1 tblsp grated Orange rind

I used more than 3 cups of carrots- as I had so many... grated 6 big carrots- which would have been most probably been 5 cups, so I had to add more oil into the mixture (the original recipe states only 1/2 a cup).

METHOD
First of all, peel and grate the carrots so you have them on hand, Grease and/or line a tin approximately 23cm round AND Pre-heat oven to 160 C (They say 180 C in the recipe, but my oven seems to run a bit hotter as its fanforced)

1. Beat eggs until thick, stir in half a cup of the oil.
2. Sift flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg into the egg mixture and combine.
   
3. Fold in carrots, walnuts and orange rind. Add the rest of the oil if the batter is really stiff, the batter shouldn't be runny, but shouldn't be so dry that its powdery either.
4. Spoon mixture into tin
5. Bake for about 40 minutes or until the cake springs back when lightly touched. Leave in tin for 10-15 minutes (take it OUT of the oven!) before turning out into a wire rack .

The recipe recommends to ice with cream cheese icing... so already I am off to a flying start for the week! 2 recipes in one day.

Cream Cheese Icing

Direct from the Edmonds Cook Book

2 Tblsp butter, softened
1/4 cup Cream cheese
1 cup Icing sugar
1 tsp grated lemon rind

METHOD

1. Beat butter and cream cheese until creamy. Mix in icing sugar and lemon ring, beating well to combine.

I'm a huge fan of citrus and so is my family, so I also added a bit of lemon juice into the icing mixture and then added a bit more icing sugar. I worked out that you can't have it too runny otherwise it falls off the cake!

So the final result

- Jossy's Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Icing -

The cream cheese icing is a bit yellow due to the amount of lemon rind and juice I put in!