Birfday.

Dr W's birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAYZ! Crank's carrot cake.

150 g grated carrot
2 eggs (from happy chickens)
100g brown sugar
5 tbsp rape seed oil (sold as common-or-garden vegetable oil, check the label!)
100g self-raising flour
1tsp ground cinnamon & 1tsp ground nutmeg
50g desiccated coconut & 50g sultanas


Whisk the eggs and sugar until fluffy and whisk in oil gradually. Fold in all the other ingredients and bake until golden and it passes the skewer test. Proper simple.

Piped (oh yes) with sweetened, lemony cream cheese and decorated with orange and lemon jelly slices. Retro fun!

This cake is the carrot cake my mum makes. And it's the reason why I dislike most other spongy, oily, overly cinnamony carrot cake.

Like all Crank's veggie recipes, it's well considered and packed with flavour. Buy a Crank's book. It's pretty easy to find original 1980s copies in charity shops for not much money. You do have to be a BIG fan of cheese, nuts and pastry though... Oh hang on!