Christmas carrot cake with gingerbread decoration

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Ingredients for carrot corpus with topping

• 400g plain flour

• 250g of cane sugar

• 250 ml of oil

• 4 eggs

• 250g of pecans

• vanilla bean

• 130 ml of 100% apple juice

• 2 teaspoons of baking powder

• 1 teaspoon of baking soda

• ½ teaspoon of salt

• 1 and ½ teaspoons of ground cinnamon

• 1 teaspoon of ground ginger

• ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

• ¼ teaspoon of ground cloves

• 300g of grated carrot

• 1000g of mascarpone

• 100g of powdered sugar

• 3 limes

Preparation of the corpus

• Preheat the oven to 180°C

• You will need a round baking dish, I have a universal one from 16 to 22 cm in diameter. This time I chose 20 cm.

• Line the bottom of the mold with baking paper.

• If you have a food processor, pour cane and granulated sugar into the bowl of the food processor, add whole eggs, oil, apple juice and vanilla bean and mix until you have a smooth liquid cream dough. If you don't have a food processor, a hand mixer and a larger bowl will suffice.

• Add flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ground cinnamon, ground ginger, ground nutmeg and ground cloves to the second bowl. I crushed my cloves in a mortar.

•Mix all the dry ingredients well and start mixing spoonfuls into the liquid creamy dough.

• When the dough is ready, gently mix in the grated carrot (I grated it coarsely) and chopped pecans with a wooden spoon.

• Pour half of the batter into the mold and bake for 30 minutes, checking and baking as needed. I baked in our old oven for 40-45 minutes.

• Remove the cooled dough from the mold and then bake the second half of the dough.

Filling & decorating

• Put all the mascarpone in a large bowl, sift powdered sugar into it and mix with a hand mixer until the sugar and mascarpone are combined.

• Add the zest of three limes.

• Juice two limes and gradually pour the juice into the cream while mixing and taste. We prefer a more sour cream and we would easily add the juice from the third lime as well.

• Cut the carcasses into equal layers and coat each with cream. Use the rest of the cream on top and around the entire body.

• If you want to make a gingerbread city cake, bake and decorate gingerbread the day before, you can find the recipe TU.

• Coat the gingerbread houses with a layer of cream and stick them around the entire body. On the top of the cake, you can create anything that describes you out of honeydew, I baked a wolf and a forest.

tips & tricks

• Divide the dough and bake it twice so that the inside is well baked and easier to cut.

• Stick the gingerbread in the cream just before serving, otherwise they will get wet, may break and fall off.

• If the houses around the cake do not hold well, insert a toothpick into them and insert it into the body, but be careful when serving the cake.

• The amount of mascarpone (1000g) is calculated for filling, covering the entire cake and gluing the gingerbread. If you just want a bare carrot cake, half the ingredients for the filling will be enough.

• for a more creamy filling with a slightly different taste, you can use half mascarpone and half Philadelphia cheese.

• For a gluten-free cake, use almond flour, for example.