I make carrot cake so infrequently that I never remember which recipe I used. This is an attempt to stop that trend :) I know for sure I have used Orangette's recipe (a lot of work but good, and has a funny memory attached because my cat stood on it and ate a chunk of it through plastic wrap while it sat on the counter overnight).
I wanted to make a carrot layer cake for my partner and me for our 10th wedding anniversary celebration at home. Me having COVID and needing to quarantine kind of limited our plans a bit (we've hit double digits and wanted to do something extra special!) but I felt well enough to want to contribute somehow. I picked this recipe because it was small enough that I wouldn't have to do any math to refigure it for the size I wanted (6 in/15 cm diameter 2-layer cake) -- many recipes I found were either a single layer or 3 layers, and three pans seemed overwhelming to me dishes wise and also because the cake is only for 2 people. Plus I was still sick and made plans to do this the same day so I didn't want to overcomplicate things.
Shout out to the Great British Baking Show for being an eternal wellspring of motivation. It always seems to be able to give me a big push to get in the kitchen and actually make what I am thinking about making.
Notes:
- I did not have fresh ginger so I used 1/2 tsp of powdered.
- I used a different recipe for icing than the one the recipe suggests because I had ingredients bought before I picked a recipe, and I didn't plan for mascarpone. The Cream Cheese Frosting I used is really great structurally for building a layer cake, but after having it on a couple of cakes like this I think it might be a little too sugary/rich to use in such large quantities. (Normally I use it to decorate gingerbread cookies.) I halved the recipe and it frosted this cake generously, with a little bit (maybe 1/3 to 1/2 cup) left over.
- I decorated the cake with toasted walnuts and loved it, especially since there were no nuts in the cake itself. It adds something to offset the sweetness of the frosting.
Verdict: The cake itself baked a little funny -- parts of it looked straight up burnt when I pulled it out of the oven. Almost like the sugar started separating out from the batter. This might have been from the butter I used to grease the pans, too. However, the finished product ultimately tasted good, if a bit rich, and worked well as a layer cake. If making a layer cake will probably try a different recipe next time even if I have to do some math. And I really gotta stop using this cream cheese frosting, even though it's really good in smaller quantities on cookies.
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