Carrot cake

I pinched this recipe from Rachel Allen's excellent book, Bake. It's one of the best carrot cakes we've made - really light and fluffy, and dead easy to make. It was very popular...as you can tell by the small amount I was able to photograph.

You'll need:

300g grated carrot
100g raisins
200g soft brown sugar
180g self-raising flour
140ml sunflower oil
2 eggs
a pinch of salt
1/2 teaspoon bicarb
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon mixed spice

Stick the oven on at about 150 degrees C, and find a deep baking tray or a loaf tin (I lined mine with greaseproof paper).

Sling the eggs in a large bowl, beat and then chuck in the oil, brown sugar, grated carrot and raisins. It will look like a disgusting mess, but bear with me. Pour in all the dry ingredients (you should probably sift the flour, but life's too short) and mix everything together.

Tip the mixture into your baking tray/tin, and bake in the oven for about an hour (you may need to add another 15 minutes or so - you'll be able to tell it's done when a skewer pushed into the middle of the cake comes out nice and clean).

Cool in the tin for 5-10 minutes or so, then carefully transfer to a wire rack. You could faff about with icing this (an orange glace icing would be nice, or traditional cream cheese frosting), but it tastes wonderful on its own with a nice cup of tea.