Classic Carrot Cake

I remember my little sister coming home from pre-school telling us that they had made Carrot Cake that day.  I was horrified.  I thought it akin to mud pies.  Who would eat a cake made from carrots - disgusting!  Surely she meant banana cake?  I was a very worldly (!) six years old and far more knowledgeable on flavours of cake than my little sister - they came in white or brown or banana or fruit, most definitely not carrot!  I recall that I may have told her as such and maybe made her cry.

I am glad to say that my cake world has expanded exponentially and I am far more open to flavour.  I have now made cakes with carrot, potato, beetroot, pumpkin, zucchini - enough to explode the mind of many a six year old.  Though most three year old's I know drink baby capuccino's while nibbling at their croissants; the six year old's are probably doing the Times crossword online, eating foie gras on toasted brioche and drinking freshly squeezed guava and pomegranate juice.  The world is indeed a different place!

 Anyway, on to the classic carrot cake.  Oh boy, this is totally NOT disgusting, it is the furthest thing from mud pies.  It is quite frankly, superb.  There, I said it up front, usually I dally about with method and what not before getting to the punch line of how it actually tastes.  But you know what?  You need to know right now that this is a great, all round, easy to make, great tasting carrot cake.

It is very easy to make - you could definitely make it with just a box grater, a mixing bowl and a wooden spoon.  You don't need a mixer or a food processor - not for the cake at any rate.  Like most carrot cakes, it is oil based so no need to beat the living daylights out of anything.  There in lies the "quick" of the cake.  Mix together sugar, eggs, oil and vanilla; lightly mix in flour, leavening, cocoa powder, salt and spice; mix in grated carrots and some raisins if you like.  Easy and takes maybe ten minutes.  Whack it in some pans - make sure you smooth the tops, otherwise they will be a bit lumpy (but easily hidden by thick icing).  Can you tell that maybe I didn't smooth out the tops of the cake so well?

There were some detailed steps, which I followed, but which I am guessing you could leave out.  The first was to sift the whisked dry ingredients onto a parchment before adding to the wet ingredients.  It definitely makes a cleaner addition of the dry to wet, but I guess you could just sift directly into the mixer bowl without too many problems.  The second was dividing the amount of floured raisins so one half was mixed in and the other half sprinkled onto the top of the pans and pressed in.  Like the before and after photo above.  This is, I presume so that all the fruit doesn't fall to the bottom.  I don't think that this would be the case with this cake.  The mixture has a thick consistency and is not very deep in the pan, so you could probably just mix in the full measure of raisins and skip the scatter and poke in step.  Also, I skipped the flouring of the raisins - and my raisins didn't fall to the bottom.

 

I experimented this time with my cake liners - one pan I used parchment and the other I used the silicon liner.  There was no difference between the final cakes, although I am not sure if this is just because the mixture was less demanding, given it is a heavier cake than say, a genoise.  More of the cake sticks to the silicon liner than the parchment but no difference is detectable once iced!

The dreamy creamy white chocolate icing is exactly that.  So easy to melt white chocolate and add it to cream cheese, butter and sour cream.  On that, I admit to adjusting the ratios a little.  Here in the UK, my chocolate came in a 200 gram slab and the cream cheese in a 300 gram pack, so I used a bit of creative license and reduced the other ingredients accordingly (read randomly, because I didn't use a calculator, just a finger to taste the final product).  I refrigerated the icing for a little bit to get it a wee bit firmer - my cake was still cooling anyway.

And because the cake and icing were such a walk in the park, I decided to make some candied carrot to decorate the top.  We were having people over for dinner, so I wanted the cake to look a bit special, rather than classic!  Just a note on the candied carrot - it is nice and crispy at the time, but if it hangs around that moist cake for very long, then it soon becomes less crispy.

To make the candied carrot, I just peeled two carrots into a pot with half a cup of sugar and half a cup of water and let the carrot cook until it was translucent and the liquid became very syrupy.  Then I removed the peelings (sounds great doesn't it?) to a silpat lined baking tray and baked in a medium oven until they were crispy. 

Yes, this is a very classic carrot cake.  It doesn't entertain walnuts, coconut, crushed pineapple or any other fancy embellishment, aside from the cocoa powder.  I assume the cocoa powder is for colour - it would be great to know what that does in the final cake, because I can't taste it.  And that simplicity of both ingredients and method means that it is a quick and easy cake that will easily impress.  Especially with the addition of the dreamy creamy white chocolate icing.  The faintest undertone of white chocolate is not cloying instead it provides just the right sweetness, with the sour cream delivering the tang.  Gorgeous.  But if you didn't have the white chocolate in the cupboard, then the traditional icing would be just fine. 

Definitely a keeper and this recipe will be replacing my fiddly carrot cake recipe.

Fruitcake Wreath

First off, I must admit to being a fruit cake fancier.  I was a late starter, preferring instead the thick white icing, but firmly rejecting the tacky layer of yellow marzipan and the dense dark dry fruitcake - the corner piece of cake was much fought over.  But now I pick off the thick white icing and reject the marzipan so as to enjoy the dense, hopefully not dry, fruitcake.  I am still not a fan of the dry fruitcake, but I love a moist, fruity, slightly boozy fruitcake.

I am also quite a fan of Rose's Less Fruity Fruitcake from the Cake Bible.  It is very rich, nicely fruity with not too many nuts.  I am not a fan of nuts in my fruitcake - I think it is the stark contrast in texture between the plump fruits and the nuts that turn me off.  So, given that the Fruitcake Wreath contains roughly equal proportions of nuts to fruit, I was almost reluctant to make it.  But make it I did.

At Marie's prompting, to get our fruit marinating in the rum, I made a batch of candied citrus peel.  It isn't a big deal to make your own - I followed the recipe in The Cooks Companion.  I prefer this recipe over Rose's, primarily because you boil the rinds first to get rid of the bitterness in the pith.  I think it maybe took about an hour from start to finish.  I used a combination of orange, lemon and ruby grapefruit as my candied peel and combined this with uncoloured glace cherries, golden raisins, flame raisins and ruby raisins to marinate in the Captain Morgan Rum for just over a week.

Apart from the weird butter instructions that everyone has already mentioned, the cake came together pretty easily.  The toasting of the nuts.  Creaming (or whatever it was) the sugar and the butter in the mixer.  I mixed in the flour, then fruit, then nuts by hand rather than the mixer.  Glad I did, because by the time I got to the nuts, my bowl nearly runneth over.

The substitution of "exotic" raisins is something that I will continue to do in the future.  The exponential impact in flavour was definitely noticeable even to my non discerning palate.  I half filled two bundt tins and they took just under an hour to bake.  Though it was a little tricky getting that thick cake mix perfectly flat so one of my cakes *may* be a little lopsided.  And even though I oiled and floured my tins, one tin held tight to the cake and so I had to wodge that back together... hence no photo of a perfect specimen unlike the other Heavenly Cake Bakers.

But in the end, it didn't matter that it looked less than perfect - it tasted grand.  All those nuts?  Divine.  As I ate it I thought, this isn't a fruit cake, it is more a nut cake with a touch of fruit, and I actually liked it.  It is a pain in the neck to cut - I have no idea how Marie managed such a gorgeous slice.  It is that messy slicing and crumbling nature that will result in it not becoming my Christmas cake of choice.  I think you need to be able to eat your Christmas cake from your hand, not sure that you could do that with this cake very easily.

 

See that missing bit on the bottom left corner?   That was a nut that wouldn't be sliced.  

I don't think that this cake will become my replacement Christmas cake recipe, but it is a strong contender.  It is light, not too sweet, the molasses from the dark muscovado provides some spice, the nuts definitely star and the fruit gives it depth and character.  I will post again once I have sampled the second cake closer to Christmas.

I am looking forward to next weeks Carrot Cake - a cake without nuts!

Pure Pumpkin Cheesecake

Woo hoo.  Finally a cake where I didn't over nor under cook.  That in itself is cause for much celebration round here.  Though, as usual, it did not go totally to plan.  The plan being that I would serve it to dinner guests on Saturday night.  I started baking the cheesecake at lunchtime on Saturday.  Somewhere in the instructions, it specifies overnight refrigeration.  Which is not unusual for cheesecakes.  I swear that this bake along is actually a test for memory and brain function.  And apparently my memory and brain function ain't what it used to be.

So, let it be known that you don't in fact, need to refrigerate overnight.  You can definitely get away with about four to six hours in the fridge and no one will be any worse off for the experience.  Apart from their waistlines, because this cheesecake is so seriously fantastic it is difficult to stop at just one slice.

I grew up eating cheesecakes that were the holy union of gelatin, condensed milk, cream cheese and a fridge.  The result being overly sweet, very rich desserts with the best bit being the crumb base.  There seems to be an overriding obsession about using the oven as little as possible when it comes to family pot luck dinners.  This last trip back to family pot luck NZ, I ate green fluff with crushed pineapple and tiny marshmallow bits and I think maybe some rice.  Not sure what that was - I didn't stop for the recipe, but I do know it contained alot of gelatin or instant pudding and it never saw the inside of an oven.  Before you ask, I made a Plum Duff which was my Great Grandmother's recipe.  I will hopefully do a post on the Plum Duff prior to Christmas. 


This cheesecake is very sophisticated, and much more refined than the cheesecake of my youth.   Even though it should definitely grace the family pot luck table, I am pretty sure it never will.  You see, it spends some time inside an oven, enjoying the steamy depths of a water bath.   I would take an oven water bath over dealing with gelatin any day of the week, but I guess that is just me.

The only slightly involved step in this recipe was boiling the pumpkin puree with the sugar.  Apart from that, all you had to do was introduce food processor to ingredients in the right order.  Rose's tip for pressing the crumbs into the base with a flat sided measuring cup was genius.  My biscuit base has never been so thin and even.  Personally, I like my biscuit base a little less oily so next time I will add the butter gradually to the biscuit and pecan crumbs.

The other great tip was to use a silicone pan to protect the springform pan.  I have made Rose's Cake Bible baked cheesecake a few times and every time my tin foil shroud has let water into the cheesecake.  I am not sure if it is healthy to be so excited about this addition to my baking tips repository?  It certainly is better than the tip I got from my Great Aunt Betty to add a couple of tablespoons of instant pudding (doesn't matter which flavour!!) to my whipped cream to keep it from weeping.  Rest assured that her tip is filed quite a distance from the top.

This was a very liquid cheesecake and a very small part of my brain did wonder if it would set.  The larger part, dominated by Rose, assured me that this would be fail proof.  And you know what... it was.

Before it went into the oven, it was looking pale and unassuming, nestled as it was amongst the pre dinner party detritus on my bench.   When it emerged from 45 minutes in the very steamy and warmish oven and then an hour of post water bath recovery time it had taken on an orange glow.

It does amaze me how different the colour is pre and post baking.

In summary, this cheesecake will definitely go in the repeat pile.  It is much lighter than the Cordon Rose Cream Cheesecake in the Cake Bible.  For any non Americans - don't be put off by the thought of pumpkin in your cheesecake... the flavour is very subtle and I think it provides a gorgeous colour and texture to the cake.

Edited to add :: I didn't make the caramel, because after making the cheesecake and then getting everything ready for our dinner guests, the last thing I felt like doing was fiddling about making caramel - particularly because it usually takes me at least two attempts, one where to sacrifice to the cake gods and one to grace the final project.  Maybe next time, since everyone's caramel looks fantastic.

Until next week, when we will be baking the Fruitcake Wreath.  I candied some orange, ruby grapefuit (amazing flavour) and lemon peel last week and my fruit has been soaking nicely is some Captain Morgan Rum.  I don't usually like nuts in my fruitcake, so with this one topping in at a massive 600 grams of nuts, the results should be interesting.  I think Faithy and I will end up with similar posts re our dislike of pecans and walnuts...

Catalan Salt Pinch Cake

I now know why this is called a Pinch Cake - because you can't cut it neatly.  My parents will be surprised to hear that I do have *some* deeply ingrained table manners - I was horrified at the idea of pinching of a wodge of cake to then stuff in my mouth.  Could you have more than one wodge?  Or was that akin to a Seinfield double dip?

Anyway, enough amateur psychoanalysis, how about some amateur baking instead?  This was a pretty easy cake to make, with thankfully no icing!  Toast and grind some almonds, make a meringue with sugar and almonds and then beat in small amounts of egg until you think you will lose your mind.  Actually, it wasn't that bad but twenty minutes does allow for alot of thinking.  Most of it along the lines of ... "Surely it wouldn't make any difference to add all the egg at once and beat for twenty minutes." and after twenty minutes of the same thought, as I carefully dosed in two tablespoons every two minutes, I did feel perilously close to insanity.

The resulting cake took an age (forty minutes or so) to bake - but I think that was because I didn't cut the parchment collar down to size.  That minute I saved in prep time cost me about ten in baking time.  I will now have to plant another tree to offset the carbon footprint of my laziness.

My cake did dip a little in the middle - probably more than in Rose's fabulous picture, although not quite enough for me to resort to weeping.  I think I may have slightly undercooked this cake (I seem to be repeating that quite a bit - over/undercooked each week).  Although my cake tester came out dry, the cake emitted a mushing noise when I touched the top.   Even now, the day after, still that same mushing sound.  This may be the reason it is such a mess to cut.  The knife either compressed it akin to slicing a hot loaf of white bread or else it grated it like cheese.  So in the end I hacked it with a serrated knife and also did a bit of pinching.  The pinching was far neater, but fraught with the aforementioned psychological issues - who knew!?

We ate the cake with what were apparently the last twenty UK grown raspberries (based on the price) and whipped cream.  On the whole, I was unimpressed by this cake.   Yes it is moist, with a touch of lemon and the subtle crunch of ground almonds, but if I were to seek out an almond cake, then I would turn one more page in Rose's book and go straight for the Almond Shamah Chiffon.  That way I wouldn't have to confront any of my phobias (other than maybe that one about eating such a girly pink cake) and I would have a cake that I could serve my Nana (I am not implying that she is a non- handwasher, although, now I come to think of it...).

 

Playing Catch Up - Woody's Lemon Layer Cake

What an unmitigated disappointment this cake was or perhaps it was just the baker...  I read a few posts on it and marveled at the light texture and general gorgeousness of it.  There were no real warnings to heed, so even though I was running a week behind, I figured I would whip this cake up for a Friday the 13th morning tea.

The method of beating the butter into the flour and then slowly adding the eggs/liquid always leaves me with a flat, tough cake.  I am not sure what I am doing wrong.  Am I beating too much?  I have no idea.   The old fashioned creaming butter and sugar, beating in the eggs and folding in the flour always gives me a better textured more airy cake.  One of the great mysteries of the world - any tips will be gladly received.

I have been entirely slack in the photo department for this cake - I will get my act back together for the Pinch Cake.  I think the jetlag has eaten my motivation!  The cake came together pretty well, though the time between uncooked and overcooked was about a nanosecond.  Needless to say I missed it, and one of my cakes was overcooked.  I really need a double oven - did you hear that Santa?  I also used some silicon pan liners in the place of the parchment paper - what a mistake.  I thought silicon didn't stick to anything, well, I can now attest that cake sticks to silicon.  This cake at least.  Hot, warm or cold, it stuck just the same - even worse on the overcooked cake.

I did cheat and chickened out of sacrificing even more eggs to this cake - I used the Tiptree Lemon Curd instead of standing over a double boiler stirring.  I have done my lemon curd time!  My icing came together without any issues.  The white chocolate custard tasted a bit liked condensed milk but maybe that was because I had tasted it too much?!  It was smooth and creamy and a dream to wrap around the cake.  I also trimmed off the browned tops and bottoms - surely Woody did that for the photo shoot, because I can't imagine how he got them to stay so unbrowned...

I am pretty sure that I will never ever make this cake again.  Well, maybe I might attempt it if I get some remedial lessons on the method.  The icing I will most definitely make again.  The texture was fantastic and it would be great on cupcakes.  Given that, I have to correct my opening cry of this cake being an unmitigated disappointment - the icing saved it.  Having said that the friends I served it up to, raved about it.  I just love how the English are so so terribly polite!

Baby Chocolate Oblivions

The last time I made this cake was for the base of our wedding cake over five years ago.  I can remember the heating and beating of 18 eggs in my super sized Kenwood the day before the wedding.  Great fun, but not as much fun as assembling the cake at 5.00am the morning of the wedding!

My approach this time was not as exacting as five years ago... after all, I wasn't trying to impress 128 people with my wifely baking skills!  It is quite a simple recipe - chocolate, butter, a touch of sugar with folded in warmed, beaten eggs, baked in a bain marie.  I think I lost the plot a little bit with Rose's instruction to cover the muffin pans with a baking tray.  I was thinking myself very clever as I put the lid on the baking dish... which after the 15 minute baking time, wasn't so clever as it resulted in baby cakes that didn't wobble in their middles.  Their middles were quite taut, without a wobble or a quiver in sight.  I wasn't too worried, as I know that even overcooked, Rose's cakes are more than edible!

I didn't use a silicone muffin pan, and weirdly, I didn't grease the massive muffin pan that I used instead.  I definitely must be on holiday - very laxidaisical baking.  And the proof was in the pudding.  I had to warm the pan to remove the cakes, and of course the pan held tight to some of the cake.  My little cakes were less than perfect looking.  And the overcooking made for a denser texture - not unpleasant, just less creamy smooth than I remember.  In hindsight, the texas muffin pan was a mistake.  I think a mini muffin pan or even the one that we used for the Barcelona bars would be a much better idea because these cakes are very very very rich.

These cakes were served up with a scoop of strawberry ice cream.  That ice cream was really needed to cut through the richness.  They were a bit too rich for the men in particular.  Those that were accustomed to eating chocolate (ahem) were able to finish off a half serve of those massive texas muffins, but only if paired with the strawberry ice cream.  There was alot of stomach holding and groaning after they were eaten, so maybe a quarter serve would have been ample.  As an aside, you will be relieved to know that the dog ate none of these little cakes - chocolate being a dog killer and all.

Pumpkin Cake with Burnt Orange SMB

I am pleased to say that we arrived in pretty good condition after our long long long flight.  I thought my little assistant travelled really well and he slept much more than he would have at home.  Sure there were a couple of crying jags, but I think by that stage everyone on the plane was probably feeling like howling with the frustration of extended turbulence.  His love of travelators knows no bounds as we spent 99% of our in transit time in Hong Kong going backwards and forwards.



I can honestly admit, that if not for this group, I would never ever have baked this cake.  This is when baking with pictures can actually be a bit intimidating rather than inspiring.  Thankfully though, I did suck up some courage, buy a bundt pan (pumpkin pans are definitely not available in this sleepy little town!) and finally made my interpretation of Rose's very grand and very literal Pumpkin Cake.

Apart from a couple of ingredients - the walnut oil and pureed pumpkin- this was actually a very simple cake to make. I searched high and low for walnut oil (well, maybe not that high or low - just one grocery store) but to no avail.  I just substituted canola oil for the walnut oil. I made my own pureed pumpkin which added to my trepidation - how wet is canned pumpkin?  Would it ruin the cake if my pumpkin was too wet/not wet enough?  I let my pureed pumpkin drain while I prepared the cake mix, just to be cautious.  Making pumpkin puree is hardly brain surgery - so don't let that put you off making this cake.

The cake mix looked quite wet to my eye - and this is where I started to question how wet canned pumpkin puree could be?  Though not enough to do any research on the internet!  I was baking to a deadline - we were planning a visit to friends in Curio Bay to watch a couple of rugby games and stay the night.  I just hoped for the best, placed my faith in Rose, and whacked the pan into the oven.  I think it took about 40 minutes to cook.  About a quarter of the time it took to make the faffing icing.

Ayeee.  That icing.  Okay, so it probably isn't best to multitask while making caramel.  My first batch of burnt caramel was a bit too burnt.  More black than deep amber.  But onwards I soldiered, adding it into the milk - which promptly split.  At that stage, I couldn't just pretend it would be okay.  I started afresh, with single minded dedication and produced a rather thin looking not too burnt Creme Anglaise. 



I had to use a hand beater to get the meringue, as my Mum's kitchen has a Kenwood and a swift whip hand beater with not a lot in between.  So perhaps my meringue wasn't as firm as it could have been.  I tested all the temperatures of the anglaise, the butter and the meringue and all averaged around the 21 degree celsius.  So I don't know where I went wrong, but I suspect that the icing should be creamy smooth rather than looking a bit airy.  It tasted fine, but just looked a bit weird.  My Dad thought it was a special effect to make the icing look like the skin of an orange!  Um.  Not the intended result, but thanks.  Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of the icing as I was making it.  I suspect I beat the butter a bit too much and it became to airy?  I think I will have to watch Rose make it on line - except I can't find it.  Help!  See how it looks weirdly solid but holey (don't I have a way with words?).  Was it too cold?  That orange string on the top is actually orange zest that I cooked in the remainder of the orange juice concentrate with some more sugar to crystallize it.  The cake looked a bit bland without it.

In the end, my extra air bubbles (or whatever they were) did nothing to detract from the cake.  Actually, I think the cake could more than stand up without any icing - it was that good.  Moist, fragrant, flavourful and delicious.  Definitely an alternative to the more ubiquitous carrot cake.  Actually, I can see that this cake would be excellent as a last minute whip up (without the palaver of the icing though).  I will keep making this cake - just not with the icing.

And the photo above is the view from where we ate Rose's Pumpkin Cake.  Curio Bay or more correctly Porpoise Bay.  A truly beautiful place, maybe 40 houses and a camping ground skirting the beach.  A pod of Hector's dolphins regularly frequent the bay and frolic amongst the surfers and those souls brave enough to swim in the ocean.  There is also a colony of Blue Penguins nesting around the bay - even under the back step of our friend's house.

So looking forward to seeing everyone elses perfect icing adorning their pumpkins.  Hopefully there will be a few photos of the in process icing so I can do a mental comparison.