It took me a long time to come to like carrot cake. Vegetables, in cake, no thank you! And then when I did try it it was usually dense or dry. When Michael promised me he had a recipe that was both moist and light I was interested and wanted to give it a try.

I also used it as an excuse to try out a new recipe for marzipan. American marzipan is on the whole, too sweet and sickly. I had received a new book –  The Art Of The Chocolatier, and I really wanted to try out the recipe it had. I started with raw almonds and blanched them to remove the skins. Blended down with a sugar syrup and kneaded out to form a dough. I sat it to one side while I made the cake.

The carrots were grated and added to the dry ingredients, a nice blend of cinnamon and nutmeg with a dash of allspice. The liquids include some vegetable oil and a good amount of yoghurt that added a nice amount of moistness to the cake.

While the cake was baking and cooling I made my carrots. Because I’m me I made sure the marzipan was divided evenly so that all my carrots were the same size! I added a frond of green marzipan to the top of each.

I torted my cake into four layers so there was a nice amount of cream cheese icing. I kept it simply decorated using the icing comb on the sides and a simple rosette on top for each carrot to sit on.

Definitely a winning carrot cake!