Carrot Cake with Poppy Seeds, Ginger & Turmeric Yoghurt Icing

Baking Barley Flour Black Wheat Flour Cake Coriander Seeds Flour Malted Naked Oat Flour Other Cereal Flours Poppy Seeds Rye Sarah Cotterell & Aitana Infante Seeds Spelt flour Stoneground Suffolk Flour Wheat Flour Wholemeal flour YQ YQ Flour

by Sarah Cotterell and Aitana Infante July 01, 2024

This show-stopping cake is wonderfully simple to make. It’s also very forgiving, making it a great bake for playing around with different wholegrain flours. Sarah and Aitana usually make a 50:50 mix of stoneground white flour and a wholegrain flour such as rye, barley or emmer. Add whichever dried fruit or nuts or seeds you fancy, just keep their weight roughly the same.

Ingredients

130g Wholegrain Flour, eg rye, barley or emmer
130g Stoneground White Flour
2 tsp Baking Powder
A Pinch of Sea Salt
2 heaped tsp Cinnamon Powder
1 heaped tsp Cardamom Powder
1 tsp Coriander Seeds, toasted and roughly ground
2 heaped tbsp Blue Poppy Seeds
295ml Olive Oil or Rapeseed Oil
Small thumb of Fresh Ginger Root, finely grated
200g Dark Brown Sugar
4 Eggs, lightly whisked
300g Grated Carrot (around 2-3 carrots)
1 Lemon, zested
50g Pumpkin Seeds
50g Hemp Seeds
80g Currants

For the icing

400g Thick Greek Style Yoghurt
40g Icing Sugar
1 tsp Ground Turmeric

Method

Set the oven to 175c and line two 20cm cake rounds.
Pop the flours, baking powder, salt, spices and poppy seeds into a large bowl and mix well. In another large bowl, pour in the oil followed by the ginger, sugar and eggs. Use a whisk to beat the mix together before folding in the carrots, the seeds and currants.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and use a spatula to lightly fold everything together, until all of the flour has been incorporated.
Divide the mix equally between the two lined tins and pop them into the middle shelf of the oven. Bake for around 30–35 minutes, until the top is golden and springs back when you gently push it. Your nose will tell you when it’s ready. Cool the cakes inside their tins for around 20 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
Once the cake is cool, mix all of the icing ingredients together. Pick the flattest of the two rounds to be your bottom layer, slicing a horizontal thin layer away if necessary to make the surface flat enough to stack comfortably. Add a generous few spoons of the icing onto the bottom layer, using a spatula to gently spread it evenly around. Carefully place over the top layer of the cake, lightly pushing down with the palm of your hand. Use the rest of the icing to cover the top, again using the spatula to gently smooth the icing around. Have fun decorating the top. We love to use lemon zest, poppy seeds, some extra seeds or nuts and some edible flowers.

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