Carrot and ginger layer cake

I let Man pick a cake from my recipe books for his birthday last week and he chose the carrot and ginger cake from Hummingbird Bakery's "Cake days" book.

Although I have baked many recipes from this book I haven't made this one before which is surprising considering how much I love trying different carrot cake recipes. I can now happily report that this is another winner of a carrot cake recipe which I can add to my repertoire. 

Admittedly it is a gigantic beast of a cake (even my Kitchenaid struggled with containing the batter!) so it's definitely more of a celebration cake. However there's no reason why it can't be scaled down for a more everyday sized cake. I've done this before with Hummingbird Bakery cake recipes and it has worked well.

This was also my first time using root ginger in a cake. I fully expected the ginger to be really fiery and dominant in flavour, but it thankfully wasn't overpowering. It produced a lovely, warmly spiced carrot cake. 

Another first was roasting the pecans before adding to the cake batter. Sometimes I can find pecans a bit chewy(?) but roasting them first gives them a lovely, toasty crunch. Normally walnuts are my nut of choice for a carrot cake but this has potentially converted me to pecans.

And I can't finish this post without waxing lyrical about the orange cream cheese icing. My goodness it is tasty and perfectly compliments a carrot cake. I don't know why it took me until last year to try adding orange zest to cream cheese icing but it has fast become my favourite flavoured icing. I did my own thing when it came to icing quantities as I generally find Hummingbird Bakery icing quantities to be excessive. I also prefer a higher ratio of cream cheese to icing sugar. Cream cheese icing needs to be cream cheese-y!

Ginger and carrot cake

450g peeled and grated carrots

2 tbsp peeled and grated root ginger

80ml buttermilk

3 eggs (large)

1tsp vanilla extract

350ml sunflower oil

420g caster sugar

500g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda 

1 tsp salt

1 tsp ground cinnamon 

1 tsp ground ginger 

80g pecans, roasted and chopped

Icing:

Admittedly I didn't accurately weigh things out, but it's roughly the following:

300g icing sugar

125g butter (softened)

445g Cream cheese (1 bigger pack + standard size pack of Philadelphia)

Zest of 1 orange.

Preheat the oven to 170c / 150c fan/ 325f/ gas mark 3. Grease and line 4 8" round cake tins.

Roast the nuts first. Tip them into a non stick saucepan and toss them over a medium-high heat for a few minutes until they smell toasty. Leave to cool them chop into small chunks.

In a large bowl combine the carrots, root ginger, buttermilk, eggs, vanilla, oil and sugar. In a separate bowl combine all the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt and spices. Add the dry mix to the wet mix in 3 batches, mixing well after each addition. Once fully incorporated, stir in the chopped pecans.

Divide the batter between 4 tins (or divide and portion into quarters if you only have 2 tins and need to bake the cakes in 2 batches like me.) Bake for approximately 30 minutes until risen, firm to touch and a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. Allow to cool on a wire rack before icing.

For the icing, mix together the butter and the icing sugar. Add the cream cheese and orange zest and mix for a few minutes until fully combined, light and fluffy.

Level the cakes if needed. Spread the icing on top of each sponge and stack them. Crumb coat the outside of the layered cakes (if you can be bothered) or just use the remaining icing to smooth round the outside and top of the cake. Decorate with extra pecans on top.

lemon drizzle poppy seed bundt

At times I think my blog could be renamed What Do You Make Of My Lemon Cake? because I bake them so often. As much as I try to use other flavours, I inevitably return to lemon. It's a firm favourite.

There was a pile of lemons sitting in the fruit bowl last week so I searched the interwebz for baking inspiration and landed on this beautiful bundt recipe on Sally's Baking Addiction. It's packed with lemon flavour and different from my usual lemon cakes in that it also contains poppy seeds and buttermilk.

The buttermilk provides a lovely, creamy balance to the punchy, lemon flavour. I also like that it gives the sponge a soft yet weightier texture, which is perfect for bundt moulds. I should use buttermilk more often.

There were two near disasters with this cake though, the first being the lemon soaking syrup. All the ingredients are weighed using American cup measurements so I got a chance to use my heart shaped cup measures, which are all handily strung together on a loop. Handy for storing, yes, but not so handy when you have just filled 1/2 cup of squeezed lemon juice and the weight of the other of the measures pulls it off the worktop as you pick it up, catapulting lemon juice across your kitchen.

I wasn't best pleased, although it made the kitchen floor smell very fresh.

Luckily I had a spare lemon although I did need to soak up some lemon juice from the floor with a kitchen towel to fill up the cup measure. Before you judge, the floor was clean so I deemed this action acceptable.

Near disaster number two was a pack of writing icing falling out the cupboard and bouncing off the freshly iced cake. Luckily it was a light tube, not a massive bag of flour, so it didn't damage anything. Perhaps I need to clear out that cupboard... 

Other than that, the cake was great. Give the recipe a whirl if you feel like something a little bit fancier than a lemon drizzle loaf. Just don't throw lemon juice around the kitchen like me.

red velvet cake

On Saturday night I went into town, just like all the other cool, young people. Except I went to the supermarket. To buy cake ingredients. Then I visited my brother's family and told my nephews bedtime stories about Sonic the Hedgehog and Minecraft (I don't understand Minecraft.) Later on I baked this red velvet cake.

Living life on the edge, people.

I've never baked a red velvet cake before although I baked red velvet cupcakes way back in my early days of blogging. Although my cake is more dark pink than deep red I was very pleased with it. The sponge is very light and soft in texture due to the buttermilk, and lightly flavoured with cocoa and vanilla. The vanilla cream cheese icing adds to the overall indulgent, creamy flavour.

The cake also gave me an opportunity to try out my new icing pen kindly gifted from British bakeware company, Tala. As the cake wasn't for anybody in particular, I doodled the word "yum" and some love hearts around the border. I drew it all freehand but I think the direct, unmeasured approach adds charm. It makes a fun change from my usual "throw on a pile of sprinkles" approach to cake decorating.

I already own a larger icing syringe but for smaller, linear details such as handwriting the pen is perfect. Plus it's pink and packaged in a pretty tin which is a lovely stylish touch. I suspect it'll come in very handy for decorating gingerbread men at Christmas. Thanks Tala!

Red velvet cake
Recipe from "Vintage Cakes" by  Jane Brocket.

120g softened butter
300g caster sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
300g plain flour
10g cocoa powder
1 tsp salt
220g buttermilk
1-2 tsp red food colouring gel/paste (I recommend buying good quality)
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 heaped tsp of bicarbonate of soda

Preheat the oven to 160C/140C Fan/Gas 3 and grease and line two 20cm round cake tins. Beat together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the vanilla extract and the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa and salt. Mix then carefully add to the other mixture in batches, alternating with the buttermilk. Add the red colouring and gently fold the mixture until it's a solid deep red colour. In another bowl, mix together the bicarbonate of soda and white wine vinegar before folding into the cake batter. 

Once mixed, divide the batter between two cake tins and bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 25-30 minutes until the cakes are firm and springy to touch (or a cake skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean). Leave to cool in the tins for 5-10 minutes before cooling completely on a wire rack.

icing:
110g softened butter
400g icing sugar
220g soft cream cheese (full fat)
a few drops of vanilla extract

Beat together the icing sugar and butter. Once combined add the cream cheese (I added mine cold from the fridge) and the vanilla extract and mix thoroughly until smooth. If needed, level the cakes before icing. There's easily enough icing to sandwich the cake and cover the top and sides. For the writing I mixed up a small amount of icing sugar, water and red food colouring to pipe using the icing pen.

Disclaimer: I was kindly sent a product to use/review by Tala. I was not paid for this post and all opinions expressed are my own.