This was the last bake for Great British Bake Off, it’s sad is over. I made a lower fat version by switching half of the oil with yogurt. It has the same taste, but less calories.

I wanted to make a couple of carrots, but I had some issues with the food colouring and in the end I had only a huge carrot. Hubby said it looks like a heritage carrot and it’s artistic and I shouldn’t be bothered about it. I will change the food colouring I’m using with a better quality one and I’ll buy more cutters or make lots of marzipan and play with it until I’ll finally get the grips with decorating.

Ingredients for a 20cm cake:
– 2 carrots, around 190-200g
– 1 banana
– 2 eggs
– 225g self raising white flour
– 50 g chopped walnuts
– 1 spoon of baking powder
– 75g muscovado sugar
– 75g demerara sugar
– 80ml oil
– 70g yogurt

Ingredients for the cream:
– 200g soft cheese
– 75g icing sugar
– 1 teaspoon vanilla paste

Ingredients for the marzipan:
– 30g icing sugar
– 30g grounded almonds
– 3 spoons of date nectar (or sugar syrup)
– food colouring

To make the sponge, mix the flour with the baking powder, sugar and walnuts. Add the crushed banana and the carrots chopped in the food processor. Alternatively you can grate the carrots. Add the yogurt, the eggs and the oil and mix them until all the ingredients are incorporated.
Heat the oven at 180C / 160C fan. Put the mixture into a baking tray and bake it for 35-40 minutes, until the skewer comes out clean. You can bake it for longer if the skewer is not clean. Put the cake on a cooling rack and leave it to cool.

Make the cream by mixing the soft cheese by hand, adding the sugar gradually. Add the vanilla paste when the cream is almost finished. Cut the sponge in two and spread half of the cream on the first layer, put the second layer on top and spread the rest of the cream.

For the marzipan, put all the ingredients on the worktop and add the date nectar gradually, mixing the ingredients until it turns into a paste. If you add food colouring, add more sugar so the paste will not be sticky.