I’m a baker and this is the easiest carrot cake recipe ever - you don’t need a mixer

Carrot cake can be made with walnuts, pecans or sultanas, and makes a great occasion cake.

Whilst some recipes are super simple to follow, I found Jane’s Patisserie to be the easiest, as all her recipes are.

I’ve followed the baker for years and have never had a bake go wrong, so was super confident with the carrot cake.

Topped with buttercream or cream cheese frosting, this was the moistest cake I’ve ever tried thanks to the addition of sunflower oil instead of butter.

This recipe calls for two eight-inch tins, but I used three six-inch tins to make a taller cake and it worked perfectly.

Ingredients:

For the cake:

225ml of sunflower oil

Five medium eggs

275g light brown sugar

300g grated carrots

100g raisins, optional

Zest of one orange

275g self-raising flour

One and a half teaspoons of baking soda

Two teaspoons of mixed spice

One teaspoon of ground ginger

One teaspoon of cinnamon

100g walnuts/chopped pecans, optional

For the buttercream and decoration:

250g unsalted butter

500g icing sugar

One teaspoon of vanilla extract

One to three tablespoons of boiling water

Chopped nuts

Carrot shapes/sprinkles

Method:

Start by preheating your oven to 180C or 160C Fan before greasing and lining your tins, Jane recommends two eight-inch tins.

Next, pour the sunflower oil and eggs into a large bowl and add the light brown sugar, mixing until combined.

Add the grated carrots and raisins and fold through before adding the self-raising flour, baking soda, mixed spice, ginger and cinnamon.

Carefully mix these through, being careful not to overmix before adding in the nuts and mixing once more.

Evenly divide the mixture between the two tins and bake the cakes in the oven for 30 to 35 minutes, they took 35 in my oven.

I left the cakes to slightly cool in the tin before releasing them onto a cooling rack. Meanwhile, make the buttercream by beating the unsalted butter until light in colour and adding in the icing sugar.

Once mixed, add in the vanilla and a little boiling water if the icing is quite thick.

I then placed one of my sponges onto a board, trimming off the top to make it nice and flat before spreading the buttercream on top.

Next, I placed the second sponge onto the buttercream and repeated the first step. I decorated using carrot chocolate shapes from the supermarket and some chopped nuts.

My carrot cake had raving reviews and was easily the moistest cake I’ve ever tried, it wasn’t too spiced and had a gorgeous flavour running throughout.

The orange zest really came through and was essential, despite my initial thinking of how it would taste in the bake.

It’s a great way to use up carrots and eggs in your fridge and is definitely a crowd-pleaser.