Caribbean Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
This isn't just another carrot cake recipe, this is a Caribbean Carrot Cake recipe with a twist. The twist is dark rum that you must make.
Ingredients
Carrot cake:
- 2 medium Eggs at room temperature
- 2 cups Grated carrots (eq: 3-4 large carrots)
- 2 cups All-purpose flour sifted
- 3/4 cup Brown sugar
- 1/2 cup Dark raisins
- 1/2 cup Vegetable oil
- 4 tbsp Dark rum
- 2 tsp Baking powder
- 1 tsp Baking soda
- 1 tsp Vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp Salt
- 1/2 tsp Almond essence
- 1/2 tsp Fresh or ground nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp Fresh or ground cinnamon
Cream cheese frosting:
- 8 oz Cream cheese softened
- 1 & 1/2 cups Confectionner's sugar sifted
- 1/2 cup Unsalted butter (eq: 1/2 stick of butter)
- 1/2 tsp Vanilla extract
Instructions
Prep:
- Preheat your oven to 180°C/350°F. Line two 9-inch cake pans with parchment paper or spray with a non-stick pan or rub with butter and dust with a little flour.
- Set the pans aside.
Making the cake batter:
- In a bowl, beat the eggs, vegetable oil, vanilla extract, almond essence and brown sugar together. Beat until smooth.
- Mix in the grated carrots, raisins and the dark rum.
- Using a sifter, sift in the flour, baking soda, salt, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg.
- Once the flour is sifted in, mix everything together using a spatule. Mix until it is well combined.
Baking the cakes:
- Pour the batter evenly into the two cake pans. You can make this batter into a 3 layer by using 6-inch pans.
- Place the cake pans into the oven, making sure they are not too close the bottom part of the oven nor the top.
- Bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in comes out clean.
- When the cakes are done baking, remove from the oven and let it cool for at least 20 minutes before removing from the pan and letting them cool completely on a wire rack.
Making the frosting:
- Using a stand mixer or a hand mixer, beat the cream cheese until it is smooth. It may take 2-3 minutes.
- Add the softened butter to the cream cheese and beat for an additional 30 seconds to 1 minute.
- Gradually beat in the powdered sugar and then the vanilla extract.
Frosting the cake:
- If you are an expert cake froster then you can frost the entire cake. But if you can't frost a cake like myself then start by adding frosting to the top of one cake layer.
- In between the layers you can add crushed walnuts if you want to.
- Place the second cake layer on top of the frosted cake layer then add more frosting to the second layer, as well as crushed walnuts if you want to.
