Carrot Cake (from a box!)

So my weighing scales are currently indisposed which does cause some issues when baking. Now of course there are always cups but to be honest I really couldn’t be bothered to create something from scratch last night. I was making chicken schnitzel and wanted to dedicate time to bashing chicken breasts really flat with a rolling pin. Plus it always creates a lot of washing up as The Thew has a gluten free coating which means another bowl is needed (for those interested I blitz nuts and/or crunchy edamame with seeds and add seasoning) so adding baking accessorises to that – well it’s just a mess. 

I therefore decided to buy a box of cake mix while in M&S buying dinner items. I’m not snobby about cake mix boxes. They do a job and are a good base for pimping. My friend’s husband works wonders adding extra ingredients to Betty Crocker Brownie mix. The results are epic, cause less washing up and less stress. I got the carrot cake one as I knew I could add extra spice and some walnuts to it (sadly I had no walnuts at home but hey ho). 

In general it went well. Everyone at work said it tasted good (if not a little sweet) but I have some complaints about it. Nothing that impacted hugely on the end result but things that shouldn’t really happen. So the brown sugar in it was clearly in little clumps and they were impossible to de-clump. When baked this means that the sugar goes molten and leaves holes in the cake. Not an issue but it doesn’t look good. Then the frosting. I’ve never known cream cheese frosting that doesn’t set – it’s meant to! I added twice the amount of cream cheese and it still didn’t set after a night on the cake in the fridge. Once again, not a massive issue but it’s not ideal. So below is my take on making it work a bit better than the instructions on the pack including adding some butter to the icing. I think I'll make cake box baking a regular feature to test them out.

Ingredients

1 x box of M&S carrot cake mix

2 large eggs

½ tsp baking powder (as they never put enough in)

3 tsp vegetable oil (not olive)

5 tps water

1 tsp cinnamon (because they never out enough in)

1 carrot (large)

Handful of chopped walnuts

30g butter, softened

200g full fat cream cheese (I’ve doubled this as it was far too sweet) 

1.    Preheat the oven to 180°C/GM4 and grease/line two sandwich tins.

2.    Put the cake mix in a bowl, add the eggs, baking powder, oil, water and cinnamon. Mix together well. Grate the carrot into the bowl, add the walnuts and folder into the batter.

3.    Pour half of the batter into each sandwich tin and bake for about 20 minutes. Check after 15 as the size of your sandwich tins will determine how long they take. Plus if they are on different shelves of the oven you may want to switch them half way through to get even cooking.

4.    While the cake is cooking put the icing sugar packet into a bowl and add the butter. Mix together until the butter is evenly distributed throughout the icing sugar. Add the cream cheese and mix like mad. Leave in the fridge until you need it.

5.    Once the cakes are cooked leave to cool completely before assembling. Put one cake down first, spread half the cream cheese icing over it and put the other cake on top. Spread with the rest of the icing and you can decorate with more walnuts and grated carrot if you so wish. 

N.B. With this many extra ingredients it may seem just as quick to just make it from scratch. However the box recipe excludes four of my ingredients so that would be easier and regardless of that there is much less weighing and mess.

Doesn't look exactly the same as the baked version, does it?!