Raw vegan moist carrot cake with cashew, walnut and orange frosting

I want to say a big hello to all of you bakers out there. To the ones who have stood by me from the beginning. Since the early days of Baking Made Easy when I first started to do television and share my love of baking with you.

I have to be honest, I started to fall out of love with baking. The first show I did was purely baking of course and then the subsequent shows have been about 80% savoury and 20% sweet. I began to fall out of love with baking as I no longer felt challenged by it.

Is there lots more I could learn? Yes.

Could I improve my current baking and cooking ability? For sure, yes.

But, was I looking for something along the lines of cooking and baking, but a bit healthier..? Hell yes.

So, today I want to bring you a different kind of baking; they are sweet and they are yummy but they do not require the oven to be turned on at all.

There is definitely a band wagon of raw and vegan desserts thundering through social media and in magazines at the moment, with many people running by its side and then jumping on. I would be lying if I said I had not been mesmerised by these raw and vegan desserts’ complex simplicity. But most of all I love them for the challenge they bring; from taking the patisserie desserts that I have been trained to make in a classical French style with all the usual ingredients, to having to bend the rules and think outside the egg box to bring something which is tasty, healthy but still looks beautiful and is above all achievable for you to make at home.

I know I have to eat a little more healthily than I have been, but it would be disingenuous for me to say that this is why I am starting with all this healthier food blogging. The reality is that beneath my love of flour, sugar and butter I have always been in to healthy food. This did not stem from my fashion model beginnings - as my diet at that time was far from healthy - but more from my school growing up.

We were fed on a massive selection of salads, meat and meat-free, both hot and cold. There was always lots of fruit and vegetables on offer. I was studying food and nutrition for my GCSEs and it was those days which cultivated my interest in healthy food. I have always naturally - and weirdly - been the one who likes brown rice, brown pasta and biscuits and desserts of an oaty healthy nature. When I was at cookery school I would bring in gluten-free cookies and sweet treats for my classmates to try.

This all sounds like a massive justification, and perhaps it is, but it's something that I need to get out of my head and into words to give you a bit more of a picture of what I am doing, and why I'm doing it, so that it may make a bit more sense.

On to the recipe now. I am very proud of my carrot cake. I had experimented first with carrot cake pancakes and then messed about with a carrot cake protein ball, but this raw carrot cake with walnut and orange frosting is my absolute favourite.

It's moist, it's quick to make, (admittedly the cashews in it are not the cheapest), but for a now-and-again treat, it really is worth experimenting with. My boyfriend has made me blush saying that it was the best carrot cake he has ever tasted. #happydays

INGREDIENTS

Cashew and walnut frosting

200g of cashews

140g of unsweetened almond milk

4 medjool dates (pitted)

seeds of ½ a vanilla pod

Carrot cake

300g oats

320g of carrots

180g of medjool dates (pitted)

50g of almonds

2-3 tsp of cinnamon

1tsp of ground ginger

1/3 tsp of nutmeg

1 handful of walnuts, bashed up a bit

zest of ½ an orange

METHOD

First start with the cashews. Pop them in a jug and then pour boiling water over them and let them sit for about one hour minimum and overnight maximum. As I suffer from extreme impatience, I soaked them for 45 minutes precisely and they were good, but the longer the better is better.

Some of them will bob to the top but that's okay.

Whilst your cashews are bobbing and soaking, make the cake base. Put the oats, carrots, dates, almonds, cinnamon, nutmeg and ground ginger into a magimix and blitz it all together until it is totally combined.

My mixture was a big ball of mush, and that is the right consistency. As this is blitzing, line an eight inch square tin with baking parchment so that it overlaps the sides of the tin. Then plonk your mixture in to it.

Then flatten it down using either the back of a large spoon or an offset spatula to make it level, flat and even.

I did not take a picture for the process of this, but drain the cashews off well and put them in to a blender/nutribullet. Add your almond milk, dates and vanilla and continue to blitz it until it is smooth and creamy. It will have flecks of brown in it (dates) and black (vanilla) and may even have a greyish tinge, but that’s all good and it's all very tasty.

Then smooth it out again with the palette knife or spoon so that it's nice and flat, about 1cm thick.

Sprinkle over the walnuts and the orange and pop it in the freezer for about one hour.

Have a good clean down. I like to make as much mess as humanely possible on the work surfaces, getting things out all at once and not putting things away. So there is always lots of cleaning to be done.

Take the carrot cake out of the freezer after an hour. The frosting and base should not be frozen, but it will make it easier to cut after an hour long sabbatical in the freezer.

I am learning this is quite normal for raw desserts of this nature. Cut the carrot cake into 16 equal squares. Then take lots of pictures of them for your social media posts before tucking into them with bountiful glee.

Are they low in fat? No, not so much. Are they high in good fats? Yes absolutely. They are also refined sugar free, refined flour free... and vegan!

Enjoy x