Autumn Carrot Cake

Heyo!

Last week I made an absolutely "delish" carrot cake and wanted to share the recipe with you. It requires quite a few ingredients, but I promise, it's super simple to make!

Ingredients:

- 200g Self Raising Flour

- 175g Light Brown Sugar

- 250g Carrots

- 150g Raisins (or 80g if you're less fond of raisins like myself)

- Pinch of Salt

- 2tsp Ground Mixed Spice

- 3 Eggs

-150ml Sunflower Oil

For the Cream Cheese Frosting:

- 200g Cream Cheese         

-4tbsp Icing Sugar           

- Zest of 1 Lemon            

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4 and line a loaf tin with greaseproof paper.

2. Put the flour, salt, sugar, spice and raisins in a large bowl and mix together.

3. Grate the carrots, add to the large bowl and mix everything together again.

4. In a small bowl, add the eggs to the oil and whisk them lightly together. Then pour into the large bowl with the dry mix and mix it all together with an electric whisk (or a wooden spoon, that will do as well).

5. Put the mix into the loaf tin and bake in the oven for 1 hour. You'll know it's ready by putting a skewer or a knife into the centre and it comes out clean.

6. Allow the loaf to cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes.

7. Make the frosting: Zest the lemon (but only zest the top yellow layer, not the one under which is white) and add it into a small bowl with the cream cheese.

8. Add the icing sugar into the small bowl that has the lemon and cream cheese and mix the 3 ingredients together. (Add a little more icing sugar into the mix if you think the frosting lacks taste.)

9. Spread the frosting onto the cake and decorate it how you like.

And that's pretty much it! This was truly a lovely recipe and very relevant to the new season. It's so easy peasy and therefore... I do recommend giving it a go!

Sharleen x  

Summer Bucket List ~ Read.

Hey Guys! 

Although it is the end of summer, I wanted to share with you one more thing I did of which I forget to tell you about.

I finally finished The Hunger Games and Read The Fault in Our Stars! To sum up 'The Hunger Games', it was A-MA-ZING. 'The Fault in Our Stars'? Let me begin by apologising to the book for having doubted it. At the beginning of reading it I thought it was completely over-rated and was, quite frankly, pretty boring really... I did share my thoughts with others, whom agreed with me. So how could it not be boring? As I read on I began to get more and more into the book and when I got to the end (which I predicted correctly by the way, 10 gold stars for me!) I thought it was such a beautiful, yet truthful ending. The mix of it being a predictable, yet somehow also unpredictable, ending was probably what made the book so great and popular. But yes... I'm not entirely sure where I intended to go with this so if you don't mind me, I'll just be reading 'Catching Fire'. Ta-ta!

Sharleen x

Summer Bucket List ~ Bubble Tea.

Whoop whoop! 

Guess who got a bubble tea this week in central London (which was indeed number 19 on my Summer Bucket List). You guessed it, me! I went to China Town the other day with two friends and ordered my usual mango bubble tea with lychee popping pearls (£3.25 at Cuppa Cha) which was A-MA-ZING as usual.

If you haven't already tried a bubble tea, I really do recommend it (I wouldn't suggest getting a milk one though... unless you're a big fan of milk).

 This week my friends tried it for the first time and they're now obsessed. I think that's saying something...

Sharleen x