Thing Twenty: Carrot Cake
Oct. 9th, 2012 11:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badseed1980I have loved carrot cake for as long as I can remember. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pierceheart shares this love with me. I mean, really--what's better than the slightly tangy, creamy, sweet taste of cream cheese frosting, paired with the rich spiciness of a good carrot cake? I'm kind of picky about carrot cake, though. See, so many of the recipes have stuff like crushed pineapple or grated coconut in it. That's not the carrot cake I grew up with! Nothing tropical about it! Also, I've seen that some of the recipes that contain those things have much less CARROT in them. This is just wrong. A carrot cake really should contain a good heaping helping of grated carrots.
Oddly enough, I have found myself using a recipe from Paula Deen forpierceheart's past two birthday parties. I don't generally like her stuff much, but her recipe is just what I want in a carrot cake. Well, almost. I leave out the pecans, because not only is pierceheart not fond of them, but our friends' son is allergic to nuts, and we don't want him to be denied a piece of cake at the party! I also feel like it needs more spices than just cinnamon. I tend to add a bit of ground cloves and freshly grated nutmeg, as well as a touch of ginger. To replace the nuts, I used raisins soaked in dark rum. That upped the awesome level significantly!
One of the tricks to this recipe is that you really do need to use parchment paper to line the cake pans. I got paranoid that I'd forget to put it in before pouring the cake batter, but in the end, I did remember. I did, however, forget to flour the pans between greasing them and lining them with the parchment paper. Oops. Still, nothing stuck!
I am not much of a cake decorator. My frosting skills are negligible. Part of this is lack of proper tools: my plate that I use for cakes has a raised rim, so it's hard to neatly frost all the way down to the bottom. Still, I managed to frost between each layer and cover the outside in a reasonably neat fashion. I drew some kind of crappy carrots on top with orange and green decorating frosting tubes, and wrote a happy birthday message. I have so many friends who can decorate cakes with astonishing skill. One of these days, I should make an effort to learn a thing or two about cake decoration. Still, it requires practice, and I make cakes so infrequently. I'm becoming a little more confident of my skills as a baker, though. I never baked a cake from scratch until I was 25. If I could only make them look as good as they taste!
pierceheart shares this love with me. I mean, really--what's better than the slightly tangy, creamy, sweet taste of cream cheese frosting, paired with the rich spiciness of a good carrot cake? I'm kind of picky about carrot cake, though. See, so many of the recipes have stuff like crushed pineapple or grated coconut in it. That's not the carrot cake I grew up with! Nothing tropical about it! Also, I've seen that some of the recipes that contain those things have much less CARROT in them. This is just wrong. A carrot cake really should contain a good heaping helping of grated carrots.Oddly enough, I have found myself using a recipe from Paula Deen for
pierceheart's past two birthday parties. I don't generally like her stuff much, but her recipe is just what I want in a carrot cake. Well, almost. I leave out the pecans, because not only is pierceheart not fond of them, but our friends' son is allergic to nuts, and we don't want him to be denied a piece of cake at the party! I also feel like it needs more spices than just cinnamon. I tend to add a bit of ground cloves and freshly grated nutmeg, as well as a touch of ginger. To replace the nuts, I used raisins soaked in dark rum. That upped the awesome level significantly!One of the tricks to this recipe is that you really do need to use parchment paper to line the cake pans. I got paranoid that I'd forget to put it in before pouring the cake batter, but in the end, I did remember. I did, however, forget to flour the pans between greasing them and lining them with the parchment paper. Oops. Still, nothing stuck!
I am not much of a cake decorator. My frosting skills are negligible. Part of this is lack of proper tools: my plate that I use for cakes has a raised rim, so it's hard to neatly frost all the way down to the bottom. Still, I managed to frost between each layer and cover the outside in a reasonably neat fashion. I drew some kind of crappy carrots on top with orange and green decorating frosting tubes, and wrote a happy birthday message. I have so many friends who can decorate cakes with astonishing skill. One of these days, I should make an effort to learn a thing or two about cake decoration. Still, it requires practice, and I make cakes so infrequently. I'm becoming a little more confident of my skills as a baker, though. I never baked a cake from scratch until I was 25. If I could only make them look as good as they taste!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 05:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 07:30 pm (UTC)Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2012-10-11 06:20 am (UTC)but the comically it was gone.
years. possibly 15++ years more, i learned it again.
this time, i remembered to ask.
really? it's made from carrots? seriously?
and the "icing"? cream cheese? reallY?
#