Gluten Free Carrot Cake

At the minute I seem to be firing out bakes faster than I can write about them! After a pretty hectic weekend visiting the theatre and then a rage room, I'm taking some time to just sit, relax, and write about my recent masterpieces. One bake I'm particularly proud of is this gluten free Carrot Cake!

My first time trying the semi-naked
technique.

Carrot Cake is up there with my absolute favourite cakes ever. I know it's a bit of a controversial one, but the flavours and textures of this cake are absolutely to die for! 

And the best part, it's so easy!

For the sponge, vegetable oil, soft brown sugar, and eggs are beaten lightly in a bowl until combined. Grated carrots, orange zest, and dried fruit (I used dried cranberries for a little sour kick) are then folded through, before gluten free self raising flour, mixed spiced, ground ginger, and ground cinnamon are sifted into the mixture along with the bicarbonate of soda! When the dried ingredients are fully incorporated, I folded through chopped walnuts to add taste and texture!

A bit of bonus dog content (Poppy isn't
my dog unfortunately)!

Substituting self raising flour for gluten free self raising flour was a surprisingly effective swap in this cake. I didn't even need any xanthan gum! I've tried to make straight swaps like this in the past, only to end up with "gummy" cakes. Maybe the extra moisture from the carrots helped to bind the cake? Or maybe I was using a different gluten free self raising flour in the past? 

I was worried I hadn't put enough 
cream cheese frosting in between the layers,
but the cake is actually a delight to eat!

One of the things I absolutley love about carrot cake is how versatile the batter is. If you don't fancy the dried fruit, just leave it out. If you don't fancy walnuts, use pecans, or just leave them out entirely too!

By now, it goes without saying that once the sponges were baked, I left them to cool completely before attempting to stack and decorate. Whilst the cakes were cooling, I cracked on with the cream cheese frosting, my favourite kind of icing! Butter and icing sugar are beaten together to create a standard American buttercream, before adding cream cheese and lemon juice and mixing until combined. This also felt very easy, and things were going well..

A little pawprint!

Confession time, this is actually my second attempt at this cake. For the first attempt, I decided to cut each sponge in half to give four layers. However, the layers were very thin and began to crumble. When it came to filling the layers with the cream cheese frosting, the thin sponge couldn't take the weight of the cake and it began to collapse. The cake didn't completely come down, but there was no way I would have been able to carry on with the decoration. Instead, I had to start again...

Finishing the cake wasn't very difficult. I simply piled up fresh strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries with chopped walnuts, and did the same for the base of the cake too!

As ever, I have some self critiques. I do love the way the semi-naked effect has turned out. I'd never tried this before but I'll definitely be doing it again. However, the piping around the top of the cake is a little too much in my opinion, it doesn't fit well with the semi-naked look at all. A border of halved strawberries would have been more effective, but you live and learn!

This is absolutely my new go-to carrot cake recipe (whether it needs to be gluten free or not!), and I can't wait to make this again soon!

Gibby x