Carrot Cake with Lime Mascarpone Icing

I'm going to be honest and admit that I'm not really a fan of carrot cake. I've never liked cinnamon, ginger or any spices, so, naturally I would never order carrot cake in a coffee shop, nor would I make one when I could make a chocolate, coffee or vanilla cake! The other day I was thinking about the next bake for the next post and my boyfriend asked if it could be carrot cake, so I hesitantly made one and actually loved it! I think it was the walnuts and the lime flavoured icing that made it better than any carrot cake I had eaten before. Hopefully this recipe will sway any non-believers!

Ingredients

For the cake
210g plain flour
1tsp ground cinnamon 
1tsp mixed spice
a pinch of salt
210g light muscovado sugar
70g chopped walnuts
200g carrots, grated
50g desiccated coconut
3 eggs 
145ml olive oil 

For the lime icing

300g icing sugar
75g softened butter
75g mascarpone cheese
zest and juice of a lime
a handful of chopped walnuts (optional)
lime zest (optional)

Method

Carrot cake

1. Preheat your oven to 180ºC and grease and flour two sandwich tins. Sift your flour into a large mixing bowl and add the ground cinnamon, mixed spice and salt. When those ingredients have all combined, add the muscovado sugar and mix until there are no lumps remaining.
2. Now add in your chopped walnuts, grated carrot and desiccated coconut and mix together. Finally add the eggs and olive oil and combine all the ingredients to a nice cake batter. 
3. Pour the batter into your prepared sandwich tins making sure there is an equal amount in both tins. Bake for 25 minutes, and check that a fork inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Leave to cool and make the icing. 

Lime mascarpone icing

1. In a mixing bowl beat together the butter and the mascarpone until smooth and sift in the icing sugar. Once the icing sugar is all mixed together, add the lime zest and lime juice and stir until combined. 
2. Once the cakes have completely cooled, remove from the tins and assemble your cake. Put half of the icing onto the cake which will be the bottom of the carrot cake and spread out - be careful as the icing is quite wet so may drip down the sides, so maybe don't spread the icing too far, or, add more icing sugar to the mix. 
3. Once your have iced the first cake, place the second cake on top and use the rest of the icing on top smoothing it out over the surface. 
4. From a height sprinkle over the chopped walnuts and lime zest - I used a cheese grater for this bit of lime zest so the pieces were bigger. You may want to chill the cake for a bit if the icing is particularly wet. Cut a slice and enjoy!