Walnut Carrot Cake

I'd been lusting after some carrot cake for weeks. And it, like every good tormentor, didn't fail to show up to any and every of my public outings. Grab a coffee, there it is. Street fair, they're selling it. Homemade, no less, but for whatever reason, carrot cake is one of those products that seem unusual to Romanians. Which means it's unjustly priced. And I, being the sort of person who refuses to buy things if I can make them myself (usually), figured it was time to hit the supermarket.

I took this recipe and altered it to my heart's desire.

What you'll need:
(for the cake)

• 250g finely grated carrots (If that's as confusing to you as it was to me, just go with 5-6 medium carrots. How many grams are in a fucking carrot, anyway?)
• roughly 100g of brown sugar + 1-2 tablespoons of honey (the recipe called for quite a bit more, but I don't like baking overly sweet shit)
• 3-4 eggs (depending on size)
• vanilla extract
• 150ml sunflower seed oil (Not too crazy about this product, so I used 100, tops, but you do you)
• 60g Greek yogurt/sour cream
• 250g white flour
• 100g finely diced walnuts
• baking powder
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon powder (or gingerbread spice mix)

Now, the recipe also indicates adding some grated orange peel. Due to the toxic crap that's typically found on supermarket fruit, I skipped this one.

(for the icing)

• 250g cream cheese or Mascarpone cheese (Mascarpone all the way for me)
• 125g soft butter (but not melted)
• 200g powdered sugar (recipe calls for more, again, matter of taste)
• 50g sour cream (20% fat, at least)
• vanilla extract
• additionally, a pinch of salt if using Mascarpone. Cream cheese is typically a little salty by default, so skip.

What you wanna do:

It's actually a very easy recipe, once you've grated the carrots and diced the walnuts. You want to mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl, so flour, cinnamon and any additional spices and baking powder.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar/honey until foamy.

Then add the vanilla extract, yogurt and oil. Time to combine the two bowls and mix well - it should be a light pastey thing.

Next, if you haven't already, grate the carrots and roast the walnut over a small fire. Only lightly, I burned mine a bit - still tasted great, but be careful.

Fold them into the batter.

Pour batter into a cake pot of choice (lined with a baking sheet) and keep in oven until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean (for me, that was around 30-40 minutes, but check regularly). I have an old-ass gas oven, which I preheated, so can't really tell you what the heat setting should be, but somewhere around 180-200C.

Now, once the cake is done, take it out and leave it to cool. You want it to cool quite a bit, else it will melt the icing and make it hard to spread.

For the icing, all you need to do is mix together the sour cream, cheese, butter, vanilla and powdered sugar. Not rocket science. Spread over the cake and leave to set for at least 3-4 hours before serving.

Bonus: You can decorate the cake with leftover chopped walnuts. Et voila.