I am a little bit sad that I have not been able to experiment nearly as much with my baking in recent days. Firstly, after a glorious summer of unemployment, I actually have a job now. Employment sort of cuts into time. On top of that, a lot of the baking I’ve been doing has been specifically for events, or things I’m getting paid for, so I tend to stick to things I know taste good. Today’s baking was for a going away, as well as filling an order for a friend. I figured I’d combine the two so I only would have to make one batch of icing!
My friend Ashley is moving up to Fort Mac pretty soon, and she had a pretty specific request:
“Really moist carrot cake? With delicious spices? And a fluffy, yet exquisitely tantalizing cream cheese icing????”
How can you say no to that?! I made her a lopsided mini cake – the edges were a little too crispy for my cake leveler to function effectively – and some cupcakes for the party.
It didn’t turn out quite as nicely as I would have liked, but to be fair, I also was pretty lazy. I tried a new carrot cake recipe this time, adapted from ‘Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.’ Oddly enough, the cake came out alright, but the cupcakes caved in. I’m not entirely sure why. The cake came out a little crispy, but I think that’s because my 5" pans are dark.
CARROT CAKE (12 cupcakes/ 1 mini cake)
- 2/3 cup all purpose flour
- ¾ tsp. baking soda
- 1/4 tsp. baking powder
- ¼ tsp. salt
- ¼ tsp. ground cinnamon
- ¼ tsp. ground ginger
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 1/3 cup vegetable oil
- 1/3 cup yogurt
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- 1 cup grated carrots
DIRECTIONS
- Preheat oven to 350F and line cupcake tin / line and grease cake tins.
- In a small bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and ginger. Set aside.
- Mix together oil, sugar, yogurt, and vanilla at low speed.
- Add dry ingredients to wet and mix at low speed until just combined.
- Fold carrots into batter. When thoroughly mixed, spoon into cupcake / cake tins.
- Bake for 12 – 25 minutes, depending on what you’re making
NOTES
- I doubled this recipe, and it made a cake + 12 medium cupcakes
- I ran out of applesauce, but otherwise would have substituted it for 1/3 – ½ of the oil
CREAM CHEESE ICING (mini cake + 36 medium cupcakes + extra)
- 2 8oz blocks of cream cheese
- 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
- 2 tsp. vanilla
- 2 tsp. cinnamon
- pinch of salt
- 4 cups icing sugar
DIRECTIONS
- Cream butter at medium speed, and add in cream cheese. (I cut everything into small blocks and added when slightly softened)
- When mixture is creamy, add in vanilla, cinnamon, and salt
- Add icing sugar 1 cup at a time. Add slightly more icing sugar if mixture is too runny.
The cake tasted quite good (or at least the part of the dome that I cut off did), but the cupcake texture wasn’t ideal. Strange. I think I’d stick to my other carrot cake recipe for future cupcake endeavours, or try something completely different.
I also made some vanilla cupcakes for my friend’s order. I just used my go-to recipe found here, and piped some icing on with the giant star tip.
Chateau Gateau 