Carrot Cake Loaf with Cardamon Poached Carrots

On first glance this looks a little like a smoked salmon topped cake! Fear not it is indeed very delicious ribbons of carrot lightly poached with cardamon.

I haven‘t deviated from the classic recipe as with something like a carrot cake, if ain‘t broke don‘t fix it.

I added walnuts as usual but also some pumpkin seeds. Mainly because I love them, they are so good for you and I like a little texture in my cake. I also like to use spelt flour, in this instance I used sprouted, but you could use light spelt or 50/50.

I vary the frosting from cashew cream to cream cheese. The recipe here is for cashew cream.

The carrot ribbons are a new thing and they add a nice texture and freshness to the finished cake, plus I just love cardamon. but feel free to just sprinkle with extra walnuts or seeds.

SERVES:
01-10

Ingredients
Instructions

Ingredients

Wet

1 cup oat/almond or other plant milk

½ cup light oil such as groundnut or coconut

1 tbsp. Apple cider vinegar or lemon juice

1 tsp vanilla extract

Dry

2 cups of spelt flour I used sprouted, or plain flour

1 cup soft brown sugar or coconut sugar

1 tbsp. baking powder

1.5tsp bicarbonate of soda

100g roughly chopped walnuts

¼ cup pumpkin seeds

½ tsp ground cloves

¼ tsp freshly ground nutmeg

1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon

Approx. 280g grated carrot

Poached carrot

2 medium carrots ribboned using a peeler

2 cups of water

1 cup caster sugar

6 cardamon pods bashed open

Cashew Frosting

1 ½ cups soaked cashew nuts overnight of for minimum 30 minutes in boiling water.

Scant 1/8 - ¼ cup maple syrup

Scant 1/8 - ¼ cup almond milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

Juice of half a lemon

Good pinch of salt

Instructions

Pre heat the oven to 180°C
Grease and line a loaf tin.
Place the cashew nuts in a high powered blender with the lemon juice, vanilla and salt. Add 1/8 of the maple and milk. Blitz until smooth and creamy.
Taste and check for thickness, if it needs more sweet add a little more maple and if it‘s a little thick add more milk. Blend again until combined and smooth. Place in a bowl and refrigerate until ready.
In a small saucepan add the carrot ribbons water sugar and cardamom pods. Bring to the boil and reduce to a simmer for a couple of minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.
In a bowl combine the wet ingredients.
In another large bowl combine the dry ingredients, gradually add the wet to the dry and fold together until just combined. Add the carrots and fold again to incorporate.
Pour the mix into the prepared loaf tin and place in the preheated oven for 40mins. At this point check with a skewer to make sure itâ€™s cooked through. If not give it another 5 minutes and check again, repeat if needed.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely.
When the cake has cooled remove from the tin and place on a serving plate. Slather the top with the cashew cream frosting. If you have extra frosting I like to serve more on side as with any extra carrot ribbons.
Drain the carrots from the syrup and pile them on top of the frosting.