A CAKE LOVER FINDS HER ROOTS

To choose a favourite cake is easy for me — it’s carrot cake all the way. I love the slight hint of spice and the moist nuttiness, with the citrusy icing bringing all the flavours together in one delicious bite. Yum. Making a carrot cake with your own homegrown carrots really makes a difference. There are so many heirloom seeds available now, online and in nurseries. You can have fun planting different varieties and they don’t take up much space in the garden.

Carrots prefer colder conditions, so this is a good time to get your beds planted. They should be in full sun and well dugover. Remove all weeds and stones — it’s important that the surface of the bed is even and raked flat before seeds go in. Don’t add fresh compost before planting carrot seeds as this can produce misshapen, fibrous carrots.

Sow the seeds directly where they are to grow and mature, in longish, shallow drills. Cover with about 1cm of soil and water well. Thinning, watering and weeding are the most important tasks. Water twice a week, more if the weather is hot. Mulching helps to keep moisture in the soil as the seeds germinate and grow. Start thinning the plants once you see two to three true leaves.

CARROT CAKE

240g (2 cups) cake flour 5ml (1 tsp) bicarbonate of soda 2.5ml (½ tsp) salt 10ml (2 tsp) ground cinnamon 5ml (1 tsp) ground allspice 250g demerara sugar 15ml (1 tbsp) golden syrup 5ml (1 tsp) vanilla extract 100g (1 cup) chopped pecan nuts 125ml (½ cup) canola oil 250ml (1 cup) buttermilk 2 large free-range eggs 300g grated carrots Preheat the oven to 160°C. Line a 24cm cake tin with greaseproof paper. Sieve the flour, bicarb, salt, cinnamon and allspice into a bowl. Add the sugar, syrup, vanilla extract, nuts, oil and buttermilk and mix well. Lightly beat the eggs and mix into the batter. Gently fold in the carrots until well combined. Pour batter into lined cake tin and bake for 1½ hours or until a metal skewer comes out clean.