Mother-in-law's carrot cake

 I love carrot cake. Especially ones that are super moist and have delicate textures. This is the best carrot cake recipe I have ever come cross.

This is one of the cakes taught to me by my mother-in-law.

Soon after our wedding in Victoria, my mother-in-law arrived with a bowl, a hand mixer, measuring cups and spoons to our Sydney home.

It was her mission to teach home baking to her new daughter-in-law (me) who had never baked a cake before. Modern Japanese kitchens would have an oven these days but when I was growing up in Japan, it was rare to have an oven in a kitchen. The basic Japanese kitchen would have a gas cooker with two burners and a fish grill (perfect for a small kitchen) unlike the Australian standard kitchen which would have a cooker with four burners and an oven all in one.

The only alteration I made to her recipe was I used a fine Japanese grater, which we normally use to grate radish, instead of using a standard coarse grater. It made the cake much more moist and gave it a fine texture.

This recipe had been passed down through my husband’s family for four generations. So I must do my duty to pass this on to my kids.

Waldorf Astoria Carrot cake

Ingredients:

1 cup caster sugar

1 cup peanut or safflower oil
   (I used macadamia nut oil the other day, it was nice too)

3 eggs at room temperature

1 tsp bicarb soda

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

2 tsp cinnamon powder

1 ½ cup plain flour

2 cups finely grated carrots
   (I use Japanese radish grater)

pinch of salt

½ cup finely chopped walnuts

Icing

125g Philadelphia cream cheese

30g butter

250g icing sugar

1tps vanilla essence

Preheat oven to 300F/150C°. Prepare 23cm round tin (I like to use square ones), grease and flour the inside of the tin, Line the base with baking paper.

Beat sugar & oil and eggs for 5 minutes. Sift flour, bicarb soda, cream of tartar and cinnamon and salt. Fold into egg mixture and add graded carrots and nuts. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin. Bake for 1 hour (test with skewer), cool then ice.

For icing: Soften cream cheese, and beat all ingredients until smooth.

Cover top and side of cake. Sprinkle with chopped walnuts if you wish.

* For Japanese readers: link to bakewitheri
http://bakewither.exblog.jp/