Carrot cake recipe

The carrot cake recipe comes from a good little book from Nutrition Australia called The Secret of Healthy Children. It has a lot of good nutrition information, plus simple and quick recipes for families. It is sponsored in part by food companies, but they appeared to have been quite strict in ensuring all the recipes are healthy.

I make this for school lunchboxes. I usually make a double batch then cut one cake into serving portions and freeze. Then I put the frozen cut cake directly into the kids' lunch box and it's defrosted by morning tea. Even though this is made completely out of wholemeal flour, it's still very moist.

Wholemeal Pecan and Carrot Cake

1 cup wholemeal plain flour

1 teas bicarbonate of soda

1 teas cinnamon

1 c raisins

1 1/2 c finely grated carrot, tightly packed (165 g)

1 cup chopped pecans

1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs

1/2 cup vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 180C. Mix the flour, soda and cinnamon. Add the raisins, carrot, pecans and sugar and mix well. Beat eggs and oil together separately; then add to a well in the centre of dry ingredients. Mix well. Spread mixture into well-greased baking pan (lamington tin in Australia, 28 cm x 18 cm, or 7" x 11") and bake for 30-40 min.