Diet?!?!? Well......it IS a Low-Fat Moist Carrot Cake?

I said 2010 would be a start of a new diet - well, healthy eating regime.  More fruit and vegetables, less processed foods and sugary and fat snacks. 

After seeing a scrummy looking carrot cake on a different blog, I have been itching to bake a carrot cake!  I waited until the apple crumble pie was fully demolished first though - can't have too much cake now!  This is not my recipe but one from a well-known chef.  I use a few of her cake recipes and find them fool-proof for good results. 

A made a few tweaks here and there by reducing sugar quantity by 25g and then using 150g light cream cheese and about 25g icing sugar for the topping as opposed to 250g of quark and 20g of caster sugar.  Basically use as much sugar you need to take the sharp twang off the cream cheese. 

The baked cake before topping goes on.

The cake does live up to it's name and is deliciously moist and light and very, very moreish!  It is full of juicy sultanas and is very flavoursome!

You can just take a bite now couldn't you?  The topping isn't too sweet or too thick - just as I like it!  The cake tastes divine - not too sweet either and I think would be quite acceptable on it's own.  The cream cheese topping just makes it more luxuriant!

If you want the original recipe I used here's the link - all credit to the author - a wonderful cake maker in my opinion!

delia - low-fat-moist-carrot-cake

I hope you enjoy!

I have made this cake before and you can change the shape of the cake.  I wanted to try my new spring form tube pan.  Hence the cake complete with it's cream cheese topping looks like a giant Polo Mint!!! 
Here's the cake in a square tin which I made to take into work on my birthday.

I coloured some marzipan orange and made them into baby carrots and added some (bought) sugar flowers to give the cake a nice Spring-time theme  (my birthday is in April.).  The topping is a lemon butter icing which went well with the cake.  I omitted the orange zest in the cake mix and didn't add the orange sugar syrup to the cake after baking.  It still tasted nice and was well received at work.

Just need to work off those calories I've just consumed in sampling the cake!

New Year, New Decade, New Start!

Now, am I crazy to choose to start 'blogging' at Christmas time?  The busiest time for most people and I think I'd be clever and start my own blog!?!?!  Nuts huh?

Well, there is always so much I want to do but if I spent less time in front of pc and more time doing I'd probably get more done!  I knew Christmas was coming and yet it smacked my on the bum this year I was so unprepared!  I was wrapping  pressies Christmas morning!  How bad is that?!?!?

I'd baked a batch of holiday cookies so they were ready for give-away pressies and also for my work mates to chomp!  I made some Cinnamon Snowflakes.  The lemon icing is time-consuming to pipe - maybe if I had a piping bag with small nozzle it'd make life easier rather than using a paper-cone with the end snipped off?

I also made some Orange Christmas Trees too!  Do you like the Smarties as baubles?  I took most of the holiday cookies into work and they were popular!

Well, I enjoyed a relaxing Christmas at home with the folks - it was fun playing with my niece who at almost 4 is beginning to find lots of new vocabulary and is surprisingly good at jig-saw puzzles!  She starts off really enthusiastically, but then her interest wanes until the final 6 pieces that she insists on counting!  She'll say, "How many left?"  Then starts counting, "One, two, three, four, five, six!"  Places one piece into the puzzle, then repeats the counting again!  It's amusing!  How kids bring smiles and happiness to a household!

New Year was a nice quiet affair at home.  I was watching the usual end-of-year reviews on tv.  Best bit was chomping a greedy-size portion of my Apple Crumble Pie! 

A shortcrust pastry base filled with soft apple chunks and sultanas, topped with crumbly, crunchy, cinnamony crumble.  A drizzle of cream and a blob of vanilla ice-cream!  Sheer decadence!

And now starts the New Year Diet!  Groan!