With my dad spending so much of his life working in and around Indian restaurants, as children, my brothers and sisters and I would spend hours hanging out and watching the customers.
One thing we could never understand was why so few of them ordered dessert. Until they did order dessert, that is. Then we knew. My dad was really into cooking savoury food, but had no interest in the sweet stuff.
His desserts were all uninspiring things straight out of the freezer, such as pre-packed ice creams in weird shapes with the most comical names.
So one day, my sisters and I decided to make a cake – a simple carrot cake – and see if we could tempt the customers. Overnight it became a huge hit. From that moment on, they always came in and asked if we had any of “that cake” for afters.
It’s funny that people will turn their noses up at the idea of vegetables in puddings, but they’ll happily accept carrot in a cake. I guess it’s because it’s quite a sweet vegetable, but I’ve never known anyone to say, “Carrot in a cake? That’s just too weird.”
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My mother is a massive gardener, so it’s no surprise this is her favourite. She’ll sometimes produce a big bunch of carrots from the garden and say, “You can make me a carrot cake if you want.” Let me tell you, that’s not a suggestion – it’s an order. Unlike me, she doesn’t have a really sweet tooth. My version is beautifully moist, not just from the carrot, but from the mashed banana as well. Filled with spice and crunchy pecans and topped with a creamy mascarpone cheese frosting, it’s become my regular treat for her on Mother’s Day. It sure beats a bunch of flowers from the garage forecourt.
Carrot cake
Serves 8
275g self-raising flour, sifted
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp nutmeg
1 tsp mixed spice
150g dark muscovado sugar
50g pecans, chopped
100g carrots, coarsely grated
2 ripe bananas, mashed
2 large eggs
Zest of 1 orange
150ml sunflower oil
For the topping
250g mascarpone cheese
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
2 tbsp icing sugar
8 whole pecans, toasted
1 Line and grease a 20cm round cake tin and preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4.
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2Place the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, mixed spice, muscovado sugar, pecans and carrots in one large bowl and the mashed banana, eggs, orange zest and oil in another.
3 Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix well. This will take a few minutes. Spoon the mixture into the tin and level off.
4 Bake for 50-60 minutes. The cake will be baked when it comes away from the sides of the tin and a skewer comes out clean. Leave in the tin for 10 minutes and then leave to cool on a wire rack.
5 To make the topping, place the mascarpone, vanilla bean paste and icing sugar in a bowl and mix well. Once the cake is cool, top with the mascarpone cream and decorate with the pecans.
Nadiya’s tip
I like to use vanilla bean paste in the frosted topping, which is a good halfway house between vanilla extract and whole pods. I think extract is a bit too runny to add to mascarpone. Fresh seeds scraped from a pod would work fine, but I find that can be a bit overpowering here.