Recipe: Scrumptious Carrot Cake with Jumbo Oats Topping

We’ve seen many different variations of carrot cake over the years but we loved the sound of this recipe from Neven Maguire that used Irish oats.

This interesting recipe for a carrot cake is very simple and has a wonderful looking end result. Give it a go – you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Carrot Cake with Oat Topping

Cake Ingredients

• 100g (3½ oz) Organic Porridge Oats
• 50g (1¾ oz) chopped walnuts/pecans
• 200g (7 oz) sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 200g (7 oz) grated carrot
• 125g (4¼ oz) vegetable oil
• 125g (4¼ oz) self-raising flour
• pinch of salt

Icing Ingredients

• 50g (1¾ oz) butter
• 75g (2½ oz) icing sugar
• 50g (1¾ oz) cream cheese
• orange zest

Topping Ingredients

• 50g (1¾ oz) Flahavan’s Jumbo Organic Oats
• 25g (1 oz) honey
• 1 tbsp sunflower oil
• orange segments

Cooking and Serving Instructions

For the cake:

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F/Gas mark 4).
2. Blitz the porridge oats in a food processor for approximately 1 minute until they are quite fine.
3. Add all the other ingredients and blitz well.
4. Pour the mixture into a 2lb loaf tin lined with parchment.
5. Bake in the oven for 1- 1¼ hours – lowering the temperature if baking too quickly.
6. Allow to cool.

For the Icing:

1. Beat the butter, icing sugar, cream cheese and orange zest together in a bowl and spread over the cooled cake.

For the Jumbo Oats Topping:

1. Put the jumbo oats into a bowl. Add the sunflower oil and honey and mix well.
2. Spread on a baking tray lined with parchment.
3. Bake at 150°C (300°F/Gas mark 2) for approximately 15 minutes until golden brown.
4. Sprinkle over the iced carrot cake and decorate with orange segments.

Tip: The toasted jumbo oats can be stored in an airtight container and are delicious sprinkled over stewed fruit or added to yogurt.

Recipe courtesy of Flahavans and Neven Maguire