When it comes to sweet things, I tend to like things a bit rustic. Not too sweet. Understated flavours do it for me. Like nuts and fruit. Banana bread. And carrot cake. I’ve thumbed this recipe of Heidi’s for quite a while, thinking if I ever got round to making a carrot cake, this’d be it. Naturally sweetened with dates and ripe bananas. Dense and crumbly, with little walnut chunks. Delicious, but not over the top. Right up my alley! In fact, I think I’d even eat this at my desk, with a coffee, for a late breakfast. Usually when I make banana bread (when usually means once a year), I like it unadorned, un-iced. But the idea of a decadent, tangy, low-key icing got me. Why? That’s a bit complicated. I’d been staring at little lemon meringue pies and hummingbird cakes in a cafe last week, teetering on the edge of baked goodness, but grumblingly exercising restraint. I think the concession to icing – to an iced cake – has been building, and isn’t really so much about cake or icing. I’ve been very nose-down at my day job, with minimal time for cooking, blogging, yoga, getting out of the city, etc. I’m climbing the walls of my stressy little work-focused box. And cake is like, well, busting out. And of course, an excellent way to keep up the baking momentum.
I made a couple of small tweaks to Heidi’s recipe… she uses wholewheat pastry flour, which I didn’t have, so I used regular wholemeal plain flour. I also added a few good squeezes of lemon juice to the icing for more of a tang. The tweaks are included below. Agave syrup (also known as nectar) is a natural sweetener made from the juice of the agave plant – which is also used to make tequila! It has a milder taste than honey, is readily dissolved when used cold and is available from wholefoods stores.
2 cups plain wholemeal flour
2.5 tsp baking powder
1.5 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp seasalt
3/4 cup finely chopped walnuts
small half cup butter, heated til just melted
1/2 cup dried dates, finely chopped until resembling a paste
3 ripe bananas, mashed
1.5 cups grated carrots (about three small-medium sized)
1/2 cup Greek yoghurt
2 eggs, lightly whisked
170 grams cream cheese
3 tbspn agave syrup
juice of 1/2 medium sized lemon
Leave cream cheese out of fridge to bring to room temperature.
Sift dry ingredients into a bowl and add chopped walnuts. Stir dates into the just-melted butter and mash to form a paste (I found it was easier to combine once the butter cooled a bit). Combine bananas and carrots, then stir the date-butter mix in. Whisk the yoghurt and eggs in to the wet mix. Add the flour mix and stir til just combined. Spoon into a loaf tin lined with baking paper (here’s where I admit to not owning a loaf tin and adapting a square tin with a bit of foil – if you look closely my cake has a bit of a lean 
). Bake for 50-60 minutes on 180° celcius (350°F) or until a skewer comes out clean.
Cool cake on a wire rack. Add the cream cheese and agave syrup to a bowl and combine, using the back of a spoon against the bowl. Smooth out any lumps with the back of the spoon. Add lemon juice a bit at a time and mix til combined. Spread icing over cake (or ice half and eat now, and freeze the un-iced half for later).
Makes one big rustic loaf.
yum! YAY! and YUM!