Best Carrot Cake Ever.

Carrot cake is my favourite cake ever. I was a bit hesistant to try it, because whoever thinks of putting carrots in a cake anyway? Seriously though, mad as it may sound,  it is actually a brilliant idea! Genius and madness are remarkably close, I suppose. I've been trying out a few different recipes and combining some stuff and I've now come up with what I think is the best carrot cake ever. Although I can also do a brilliant vegan version, I think this version wins out in the end.

Ingredients:

Cake:
250g carrots
150g unsalted butter
150g light brown sugar
200g selfraising flour
3 eggs
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 cm cube fresh ginger
100g raisins
75g walnuts
zest of half a lemon

Icing:
200g cream cheese
100g icing sugar
juice of half a lemon
zest of half a lemon
100g unsalted butter

Preparation:
Preheat oven to 160/180 degrees celcius (depends on oven).

In bowl 1: Mix the flour with salt, dry spices and bicarb.
In bowl 2: Grate the carrots and mix with the ginger, raisins, walnuts and lemon zest.
In bowl 3: Melt butter, add eggs and sugar and mix until twice the volume (approximately 5 minutes).
Gently fold in flour mixture, then carrot mixture.
Pour into a greased cake tin, bake for 30 to 45 minutes.

Leave to cool. For the icing, add all ingredients to a bowl and mix well (add more sugar or lemon to taste).
Put icing on cake only when cake has cooled (or it will be horrible, the wait is worth it!).