Preheat your oven to 180C/160C fan and grease & line a large tin - I used a 9x13" traybake/roasting tin.
Pour the sunflower oil & eggs into a large bowl and add the sugar – mix lightly and combine.
Add the grated carrots, raisins, and orange zest and fold through to combine.
Add the flour, bicarbonate, mixed spice, ginger, & cinnamon and mix again – try not to over mix!
Pour the mixture into the tin, and bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes. Sometimes it can take a little longer so test with a skewer!
Once baked, leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, and then cool on a wire rack.
With a stand mixer/electric whisk, beat the room temperature/softened butter for a couple of minutes so its really smooth.
Fold through the the cream cheese so its combined, or beat on a low speed. Stir in the vanilla extract.
Gradually add in the icing sugar and mixed spice until its all combined – try not to beat too hard, you’ll want to do this bit by hand. I add usually about 500g, you want to add enough for it to be firm.
Once the cake is fully cooled, slather the frosting on top. Smooth it over, and sprinkle on some chopped nuts (I used walnuts and pecans) and then give it a sprinkle of icing sugar!
This cake should be stored in the fridge because of the cream cheese frosting, and will last for three days!
If your frosting is really loose, its probably because its been over beaten. Gradually add in some more icing sugar by hand to thicken it up.
The weight of the carrots in the recipe is already grated. Buy more (about 750g worth) to get the 500g of grated carrots. Make sure you peel them and chop the ends off!
The raisins in the cake are optional, and you can also add in 200g of chopped nuts to the cake as well if you wished!