[Recipe] Purple Carrot Cake With Edible Flowers

Every Monday I get two bags of fresh, local and seasonal produce delivered to my front door. It's like Christmas every week! Most of the time the bags are filled with your usual suspects; sweet potato, broccoli, mushrooms. Other times, I get thrown a curve ball and end up with a rhubarb or in this case, purple carrots.

Purple carrots are the unspoken hero of the root vegetable world. They're equally as nutritious as their orange counterparts, and get their purple hue from the same antioxidant compounds you find in the superfood, blueberries. I was a stumped at what to do with my mauve veg. A quick google search showed an array of similar roasting and soup recipes. Roasted purple carrots seemed pretty unoriginal to me, so I decided to mix things up (literally) and make a purple carrot cake with cream cheese icing and edible flowers. Domestic goddess prowess - level 10.

Ingredients

Cake:

2 cups whoelmeal flour

1 1/4 cups, brown sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1/4 cup honey

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

3/4 cup coconut milk

3 eggs, lightly whisked

2 cups, firmly packed coarsely grated purple carrots

1/2 cup pecans, chopped

edible flowers for serving

Coconut icing

250g cream cheese, chopped, at room temperature

2 tablespoons coconut milk

6 cups pure icing sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan forced. Grease a 20cm square cake pan with butter or olive oil spread.
2. Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, bicarb, cinnamon, ginger and allspice in a bowl. Make a well in the centre of the cake mix.
3. Combine the oil, coconut milk, honey and egg in a large bowl. Pour the oil mixture into the well. Add the carrot and chopped pecans. Stir until just combined. For a vegan version of this cake, try one of these egg replacements or Aquafaba.
4. Pour into prepared pan. Bake for 50-60 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Set aside to cool slightly in the pan before turning onto a cake rack to cool completely.

ICING

1. Adding icing is optional, serving this cake without icing is delicious! If you do want to cover your cake in icing , use electric beaters to beat the cream cheese and coconut milk until smooth. Slowly beat in the icing sugar.
2. Spread the coconut icing over the cake. Sprinkle with edible flowers. Set aside to set.

A note on edible flowers:

Flowers provide nectar and pollen for bees whose populations are declining and they are the perfect companion plants for your fruit and veggies because they encourage beneficial insects that will help you manage pests and pollinate your crops. Growing edible flowers is a wonderful project for getting out into the garden and discovering the joy and satisfaction of being able to grow something that is not only beautiful, but that you can eat!

Find out more about growing your own edible flowers.