Incredibly Moist and Super Juicy Carrot Cake

My friend Matt who lives in Auckland emailed me the other day asking for a good carrot cake recipe, I had one but its in my head and I'd never bothered to write it out. My ideal carrot cake has a lot of other ingredients to make it really moist and fruity, so I add bramley apples which are good for cooking and banana, but my secret ingredient is a teaspoon of good quality dark cocoa powder which rounds all the flavours together. Also if you can't get sweet spear carrots then just use regular carrots.

Here you are Matt happy baking x.

175g self-raising flour
175g golden caster sugar
175g butter at room temperature
3 large eggs
150g finely grated sweet spear carrot
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon dark cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
70g walnut halves
100g sultanas
1 lime
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 small ripe banana mashed
1 bramley apple peeled and finely grated
10g pumpkin seeds

ICING:
200g full at cream cheese
50g icing sugar
1 teaspoon lemon juice

METHOD:
Pre-heat the oven to 170oC, grease 2x20cm sandwich cake tins with butter then line the base and sides separately with parchment paper.
In a small pot place the rind and juice of lime, vanilla and sultanas and place on medium heat stirring once in a while till the sultanas have soaked up the liquid then remove from heat to cool slightly.
Place in a large mixing bowl the flour, sugar, butter cubed, eggs, carrot, cinnamon, cocoa, soda, 50g of the walnuts, sultanas, banana and apple. Using a electric beater mix all the ingredients till evenly combined. Then divided the cake batter between the 2 cake tins and place in oven on middle shelf for 30 minutes to cook.
Once cooked leave to cool completely before turning out and removing parchment paper.
For the icing place the cream cheese, icing sugar and lemon in a bowl and mix together with a wooden spoon till well combined. Place one of the cakes on a serving plate and evenly spread out half the icing over the top then place the second cake on top and evenly spread out the remainder icing over the top surface. With the extra walnuts place them evenly round the top edges of the cake (almost like a watch face) then sprinkle the pumpkin seeds round the middle of the cake and your cake is now ready to eat!