This ‘work’ malarkey doesn’t half get in the way of the all important baking. Still, there is always time to catch up between jobs and of course everyone wins. At home there is nearly always something to eat and invariably the work colleagues get the odd treat now and then, for which I think they are very appreciative. Although sometimes its difficult to tell 🙂 A message though for one of my colleagues – carrot cake, is far from being healthy 😉

So the weekend of Mother’s Day approaches with some haste this year – March 6th 2016, just in case you had forgotten. It’s all very well having recipes on the day, but there are some folk that do like to plan ahead. So I have this very simple recipe for Gluten Free Carrot Cake. This was actually requested by Noah’s mum, its her favourite. ‘Nothing fancy’ was the request, ‘don’t mess with recipe’ and ‘just make sure its moist’. Well, 2 out of 3 isn’t bad! Always wanting to make sure I can do something different each time and look at, what I think, is improving the recipe, I did make a slight tweak from a previous recipe…..

This Gluten Free Carrot Cake makes 18 mini cakes all told, but I baked 12 in my new Lakeland 12 Mini Cake mould (lightly greased) and then another 6 in muffin cases. The oven was set at Gas 4, 180c.

100g Light Brown Sugar (I use Billingtons)

70g Dark Brown Sugar

4 Eggs

180ml Sunflower oil

130g Grated carrots

120g Sultanas

180g Dove Farm Gluten Free Self Raising Flour

1 tsp Bicarb

1 tsp Mixed Spice

1/2 tsp Cinnamon

Sieve the dry ingredients together and pop to one side.

Whisk the eggs, oil and sugars for about 4 minutes. Ensuring they are thoroughly mixed and the sugar has no lumps. Then stir in the grated carrots and sultanas, then stir in the dry ingredients.

It’s really that simple.

Then pour into the moulds and muffin cases and bake in the middle of the oven for 18 – 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool before topping.

And nothing beats a gluten free Carrot Cake topping like good old-fashioned cream cheese frosting.

So when the cakes are cool enough, whisk 200g full fat cream cheese (I use Philadelphia) with 90g icing sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla extract and using an icing bag and nozzle pipe onto the finished cakes.

Enjoy. And to Mothers everywhere – you do a fantastic job, never under-estimate what you do, you are never taken for granted. Happy Mothers Day x