Carrot, almond and sweetcorn cake with minted cream cheese and pineapple

Name: Carrot, almond and sweetcorn cake with minted cream cheese and pineapple
Yield: Makes one 20–24 cm round cake or 15 cupcakes
Ingredients: 180 g unsalted butter, plus more for greasing; 200 g flour, plus more for dusting; 1 teaspoon sweet spice of choice (cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger); 150 g carrot, peeled and grated; 100 g sweetcorn kernels, cut from 1 corn cob; 60 g chopped unpeeled almonds, lightly toasted; 300 g pineapple (about ½ a large one), peeled and core removed; 1 tablespoon unrefined caster sugar; small handful of mint leaves; 160 g plus 2 tablespoons unrefined caster sugar; 5 tablespoons runny honey; 3 eggs, lightly beaten; 2 pinches of salt; ½ teaspoon baking soda; 1½ teaspoons baking powder; ¼ teaspoon ground turmeric; 5 tablespoons double cream; 120 g cream cheese

Preparation info

Makes
one
20–24 cm round cake

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Vegetables

By Peter Gordon

Published 2007

About

The addition of sweetcorn in this cake gives it both an unexpected flavour and a lovely texture. If you can’t get fresh sweetcorn, use canned corn-just make sure it’s not flavoured with peppers or herbs. Replacing the mint in the topping with basil gives a surprise as well.

Ingredients

180 g unsalted butter, plus more for greasing
200 g flour, plus more for dusting
160

Cake
Vegetarian

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas 4 and prepare a 20–24cm round cake tin or 15 muffin tins by buttering and flouring them, or spray them with baking oil.

In a mixing bowl, cream the butter, the 160g sugar and all the honey, then add the beaten egg in 4 batches – the mix will someti