Another carrot cake

It's birthday season at the moment which means a constant layer of icing sugar dust in my kitchen. Yay?

For last week's birthday I tried another new-to-me carrot cake recipe as there's no point in having a shelf full of baking books if I always default to the same handful of recipes. This one is from Vintage Cakes, one of my favourite books to flick through as it's full of pictures of homely bakes on pretty vintage china. To be honest I'm surprised I haven't baked this recipe before.

I think I preferred this cake to the one I made for the Man's birthday. The texture felt less wet and I've come to the conclusion I prefer the flavour of a carrot cake made with dark muscovado sugar as opposed to light brown sugar. I think it brings out the spices more.

Sadly I only have one picture of this cake so you'll just have to believe me when I say it was a winner and looked very satisfying when cut.

Carrot layer cake

Recipe (once again, slightly adapted to suit what I had available) from Vintage Cakes by Jane Brocket. I also did my own thing with the icing.

Sponges:

250g self raising flour

2tsp baking powder 

In all honesty I can't remember how much spice I added, but probably 1tsp ground cinnamon and 1/2 tsp mixed spice

100g pecans, chopped 

250g dark soft brown sugar 

220ml sunflower oil

3 large eggs, lightly beaten

250g carrots, grated 

Icing:

300g icing sugar

Approx. 75g softened butter ( I used slightly salted)

Approx. 250g cream cheese (that's all I had at the time)

Zest of half an orange

Preheat the oven to 180C/ 160C fan/ gas 4. Grease and line 3 20cm/ 8" round cake tins with baking parchment.

Combine the dry ingredients into a bowl: flour, baking powder and spices. Stir in the chopped pecans.

In a large bowl mix together the sugar and oil. Add the eggs and whisk again until smooth.

Add the grated carrots and the dry mix (flour and nuts) to the wet mix (eggs, sugar, oil) and mix everything together until well combined.

Divide the mixture between the cake tins and bake in the oven for approx. 25 minutes, until well risen, firm to touch and a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Leave the cakes to cool for a few minutes before removing from their tins and leaving to cool fully on a wire cooling rack.

For the icing mix together the butter, orange zest and icing sugar then add the cream cheese and mix until everything is smooth and fully combined. (Tip: if you have a stand mixer and find your icing goes lumpy try swapping the paddle attachment for the whisk attachment. I usually find the whisk helps to incorporate the stubborn butter lumps.)

Once the cakes are cool, spread the icing onto each sponge and stack into a layer cake. Optional: add chopped pecans on top for decoration.

Carrot and orange cake

Surprisingly, I'm not returning with another variation of mini tarts (although I still really want to bake a lemon curd version) but with a carrot cake I baked for the Man's birthday last week.

Last year I baked the carrot and ginger cake from the Hummingbird Bakery's "Cake Days" book for his birthday. Hummingbird Bakery sure do know how to make an excellent carrot cake. I often default to the carrot cake recipe from their first book for family birthdays, however I fancied making something different and a bit smaller on this occasion.

After flicking through my recipe books I landed on a carrot cake from The Great British Book of Baking, the baking book which accompanied the very first series of The Great British Bake Off. It's a lovely book yet somehow I've baked very little from it over the years. The recipes and accompanying pictures make me feel nostalgic for the early series which were very much centred around traditional (dare I say old fashioned?) wholesome home baking. 

I love orange in a carrot cake. It gives it such a sunshine-y, fresh lift in flavour which feels appropriate for a Spring birthday. I also think orange zest makes the best addition to cream cheese icing (which also attracted me to this recipe.) For the last few years I've found it difficult to make a cream cheese icing without it.

It was only when I was typing up the recipe for the blog that I discovered that I had added the zest of a whole orange when I was only meant to add half to the sponge mix. Oops! Luckily we're both big fans of orange flavour.

My only criticism regarding the cake was that I found it a touch too heavy/wet in texture, but my eaters thought I was being overly picky. I don't think this recipe will replace my love for the Hummingbird Bakery's carrot cake but it was fun to try something different and dip into a baking book I haven't used in a long time.

Carrot and orange cake

Recipe very mildly adapted (because I dislike nutmeg and misread orange quantities) from The Great British Book of Baking 

Sponges:

225g self raising flour

1 tsp baking powder 

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp ground mixed spice

225g soft light brown muscovado sugar

Zest of an orange (or half, if you read the recipe accurately. . . )

100g chopped walnut pieces

3 medium size eggs

150ml sunflower oil

250g grated carrots (Squeeze out excess moisture if they feel really wet.)

Icing:

200g full fat cream cheese

50g softened butter (I use slightly salted)

150g icing sugar

Zest of 1/2 an orange 

2 tsp orange juice

Preheat the oven to 180C/ fan 160C/ 350F/ Gas 4. Grease two 20cm/ 8" round cake tins and line the bases with baking parchment. 

Combine the flour, baking powder and spices in a large bowl. Next mix in the sugar, orange zest and nuts followed by the eggs, oil and carrots. Mix everything together until well incorporated then divide equally between the prepared cake tins.

Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for approx. 25 minutes, until risen, firm to touch and a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Turn the cakes out of their tins and leave to fully cool on wire cooling racks.

For the icing, mix together the icing sugar, orange zest and butter until smooth before adding the cream cheese and mixing until well incorporated and smooth. 

Divide the icing between the two sponges and stack as a sandwich (layer) cake. Decorate with more orange zest or walnuts if desired. 

Rhubarb and raspberry tarts

As my pineapple tarts were such a raging success with my in-laws last month I couldn't resist making them again with some tweaks. I love a versatile recipe and this bake offers so many flavour possibilities by swapping out the jam filling.

For this version I used some of my homemade raspberry and rhubarb jam and coloured the icing on top pink. I also reduced the icing sugar in the whipped cream to 1tbsp (instead of 3 tbsp) and felt it balanced the sweetness of the jam better. I also had more time to assemble these tarts so they're a lot neater than my first batch.

The shortbread type pastry was better to work with this time, generally less crumbly although I didn't mix it very evenly for fear of over handling it. I'll perfect it eventually. It's worth the effort as it's so deliciously buttery.

We enjoyed the tarts as part of a mother's day high tea at my in-laws' house. I thought the tarts looked so cute on my favourite Royal Winton Grimwades 3 tier cake stand. Pastel perfection! It was lovely to have an excuse to use it. Long time readers (if they're still around?) may remember it from old posts, back when I used to take time to create pretty photos for the blog. Those were the good old days.

Don't be surprised if you see yet another version of these tarts on the blog. There's a strong possibility I'll try a lemon curd version for the Man's birthday next month.

Pineapple tarts

My father in law loves a pineapple tart so I thought it would be fun to make some for his birthday this year.

The recipe I used was from Baking With Granny. (As a side note, I had no idea pineapple tarts were a Scottish thing either!) Unsurprisingly mine are not as polished and photogenic as Amy's tarts. One could say my mine resembled certain lady body parts. . .

Perky!

Admittedly I was in a rush assembling my tarts but even with more time I don't believe mine would ever look that neat!

In terms of the baking the pastry was an absolute pain in the arse to work with, crumbling as soon as I looked at it never mind handle it. Every pastry case broke as I pressed them into the bun tins and needed squashing/patching back together. The dough felt more like a crumbly shortbread than a pastry. I had very low expectations for any of the cases holding together or even coming out of the tin successfully but I was thankfully proven wrong. They may have been a pain to make but they were so buttery and short, perfectly complementing the jam, soft cream and icing topping.

The "quick" pineapple jam was also a tasty success and for a change I managed to not overwhip cream for the filling!

Despite their somewhat rustic appearance I was delighted with my pineapple tarts. They were very tasty and I'm already thinking of other jam or curd combinations I could try. As a lover of all things lemon flavoured I think lemon curd would be a good shout. 

Another consideration would be to reduce or entirely omit the icing sugar in the cream. It's lovely as is but I don't think it's particularly necessary when there's already sweet jam and icing in the bake, other than sweetened cream mimics the "mock cream" used in the shop bought pineapple tarts.

Well worth a try, but be prepared to get frustrated with crumbly pastry.

Cheese biscuits and chutney

I am a shadow of my former self. Never did I ever think I'd become the type of person to say "perhaps it would make a nice change to bake some savoury treats for Christmas." *

Apparently, this is me now. Earlier this week I caught myself saying "that border planting is still looking lovely and green for December" and yesterday I was genuinely thrilled to receive a car boot liner from Santa. I'm fully embracing my middle-aged era.

Back to the baking, I made savoury biscuits to accompany caramelised red onion chutney (also homemade) to give as Christmas presents to family this year. I tried two different Mary Berry recipes from her "Baking Bible" book: rich, cheesy biscuits and Dorchester biscuits. Both were delicious but the former was more aesthetically pleasing than the latter.

I must admit I'm too lazy to type out the recipes, largely because I am currently pinned down by a happy, sleeping cat and finding the book would require moving the cat. Mary's "Baking Bible" is easily my most used baking book so instead I'll encourage you to either buy a copy or dust it off your book shelf.

I tried two chutney recipes too: this one from Tesco and the other from Curly's Cooking (I think... I looked up so many recipes I can't fully remember.) Personally I preferred the second one. The garlic felt too dominant in the first one although still a perfectly edible chutney. Annoyingly I couldn't find the red onion chutney recipe I've used previously in my recipe files and the blog has closed down. Ah well.

*I haven't completely lost the plot as I still made my annual batch of tablet (fudge) and perverted gingerbread Santas and dinosaurs. 

Keeping it real with my complete lack of styling in my ugly kitchen.

Merry Christmas/ happy end of December to everyone!

A car, tacos and a hummingbird

I'm back with this year's birthday cake offerings for the nephews: a car for the 17 year old learner driver, jumbo sized tacos for the food-obsessed middle nephew and a fruity hummingbird cake for the youngest. 

I was particularly pleased with the taco cake. It was so effective and surprisingly simple to construct: four round sponges (two plain, two chocolate) cut in half and stacked on their sides. The outer sponges were covered in fondant whereas the chocolate ones were covered with chocolate butter icing with blitzed bourbon (chocolate) biscuits pressed on top to resemble a beef mince filling. Green butter icing was piped on top for lettuce, red fondant cut into cubes for diced tomatoes/chillies, grated orange fondant for cheese and plain butter icing piped for a blob of sour cream.

I was a bit concerned that a grey Toyota Yaris (what eldest nephew is learning to drive in) would look ridiculously boring as a cake but I think it had sufficient charm. Incorporating the L plate in his name made a fun touch.

I was really surprised youngest nephew requested a "normal" cake this year as opposed to the usual fun, fondant affair but he wanted the same cake I had baked for his mum's birthday (same cake I made for her last year.) It certainly made my life a lot easier as fondant work takes ages and can feel stressful but I couldn't help but feel a little sad that this potentially marks the end of the fun, birthday cake-making era for the boys.

However I didn't let youngest nephew go completely fondant free as I had recently bought fondant alphabet cutters and was determined to use them. I should have bought these years ago! I thought the pack only contained letters so hand cut the "13" but noticed afterwards that there were numbers at the bottom of the box. DOH! I'll know for next time.

Jamana bread

Homemade jam + rotting bananas = jammy banana bread. Or as I've decided to call it, jamana bread.

It's nothing ground breaking, just a basic banana bread recipe with a few dollops of strawberry jam swirled through the batter before baking, but tasty nonetheless. 

I used Mary Berry's banana bread recipe from her Baking Bible (previously blogged here) as it's a firm favourite for versatility. I've made countless variations over the years but I think this is the first time I've added jam. I just wish I had left it to bake another couple of minutes in the oven as it's marginally under baked. It was difficult to judge whether the stickiness on the skewer was unbaked cake batter or a pocket of jam!