I'm always happy to buy a coffee and a piece of carrot cake from Pret - the one I usually head for is situated in Selfridges Food Hall. It's the perfect place for a spot of people watching.
I really prefer indie coffee shops, but in the week they've mostly been taken over by 'suits' and laptops - try going into them with shopping bags and you feel like Bridget Jones entering the board room wearing the wrong attire.
Pret make the lightest moist carrot cake and I'm always happy with their coffee too, to be fair I like everything from Pret. I've had their cookery book 'Food on the Move' for years now and it's amazing that they have shared their recipes with us.
I made my carrot cake in a tin with individual squares and made nine cakes, they were a bit on the large side though, next time I'm going to try 10 or 11 cakes. The cake tin came from Lakeland.
Slightly adapted recipe - the iced cakes will freeze and thaw successfully.
You will need: 21cm square baking tin greased and lined with baking paper or a 12 hole square tin greased and base lined.
For the cake:
2 eggs
200g soft brown sugar
150ml vegetable oil
200g grated carrot
50g chopped walnuts
75g diced tinned pineapple
50g dessicated coconut
200g plain flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
For the icing: (I made half this quantity)
400g sifted icing sugar
100g full fat cream cheese at room temperature
50g soft unsalted butter
1tsp vanilla extract
1. Preheat the oven to 150ºC.
2. Take an electric whisk at full speed and whisk the eggs until doubled in volume. Add the sugar, whisk until light and fluffy. Whisking add the oil slowly. Whisk until the mixture leaves a trail.
3. Fold in the carrots, walnuts, pineapple pieces and coconut.
4. Sift the flour, cinnamon, bicarb and salt over the batter. Fold in gently.
5. Place the cake batter into the baking tin. Bake for 1 hour for the square tin or 40 minutes for the small square cakes.
6. Cool the cakes for 15 minutes and turn out onto a cooling rack.
Method for the icing:
1. Beat the butter, cream cheese and vanilla extract together.
2. Beat in the sifted icing a third at a time (carefully otherwise the kitchen will be covered in icing sugar)
3. Spread the icing over the top of the cake.
4. Decorate.