A very simple recipe that all the family will love. My dear friend, who can’t bake, comes to me for dinner. I make this cake for dessert, she loves it so much, so she askes for the recipe. Few weeks later she sends me a message: Aggie, I can’t believe, I just baked this cake and it tastes exactly tlike yours. I didn’t set the kitchen on fire and messed up again. My boyfriend loves me for it!

I was so happy to get a friend into baking and that she enjoyed making it.

So this is the easy-peasy preparation:

Ingredients:

• 500g peeled, finely grated carrots (around 5-6 carrots, but you have to meassure when it’s grated
• 250g roughly chopped walnuts
• 250g flour (can be replaced with white spelt flour)
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 2 tsp. cinnamon
• 200 g dried cranberries, soaked (or raisins)
• 300g brown sugar
• 4 eggs
• 200 ml olive oil
• 500g mascarpone
• icing sugar or other sweetener of your choice, add to your liking
• 1 lemon juice and zest

Method:

Preheat the oven to 175 Celsius. Grease a 26cm round cake tin with little butter or oil and flour.

Mix the whole eggs, sugar and oil in a large mixing bowl with a whisk. Add all the other dry ingredients, then mix in the walnut, the raisin and finally the grated carrots. Pour it into the cake tin and bake it for 40-45 mins, until a fork or skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Take it out and let it cool down on a wire rack.

For the cream, take 500g mascarpone, sweeten it with icing sugar to your taste. Zest the whole lemon and squeeze the juice of half of the lemon as well.

When the cake is cooled down, cut into half, place and spread half of the cream on the base layer, add the top layer of the cake and spread the rest of the cream all over. Decorate with pastel coloured easter egg chocolates and some fruit of yuor choice (strawberry, blueberry, or like I did with the black berries). Sprinkle the excess lemon zest on top to add a bit of flavour and texture.

Enjoy it and Happy Easter!

xx Aggie