Double Musky Carrot - er, Everything Cake

Every year I make my dad's birthday cake and it gives me an excuse to try recipes I've been itching to attempt.  This year I non-too-subtly persuaded him to a carrot cake that's famous around these parts. It's from the Double Musky, a local restaurant here in Alaska, and it's loaded with stuff. I mean, it should be called the kitchen sink cake: carrots, walnuts, pineapple, coconut, pecans; you name it.

And guess what? It's AWESOME. Seriously; like the best carrot cake I've ever had. And don't be scared of the stuff: you don't even really taste the pineapple. It just adds a ton of moisture so it's goooood.

Now, usually it's in a ho-hum 9x13 pan but this was a birthday so I  went for two rounds to fancy it up. I'm also not a huge cream cheese frosting fan so I weakened the tanginess by adding a little more powdered sugar to the recipe and whipping the stuff within an inch of its life - it came out nice and light which was a perfect compliment to the dense, richness of the cake! (The frosting even drew it's own compliments!)

Seriously, this one was hard to stop eating. If you have any inclination for carrot cake, TRY THIS RECIPE RIGHT NOW. Mmm, just looking at the pictures is giving me mouth-watering flashbacks...

Double Musky Carrot Cake
Adapted from source: Cheryl Canter

2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 cups finely shredded carrots
2 cups flaked coconut (I used sweetened)
1 20 ounce can crushed pineapple, drained
1 cup walnuts, chopped

Frosting:
8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1/4 lb. butter, room temperature
2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
4 cups powdered sugar
3/4 cups pecans, chopped
May add 1/4 cup milk to thin


Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease or butter two 9-inch round cake pans, add cut parchment round to bottom and grease; set aside.

Mix sugar, oil, eggs, and vanilla. Stir in flour, cinnamon, soda, and salt. Fold in carrot, coconut, pineapple, and nuts. Pour into greased pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 35-50 minutes, or until a tester inserted into center comes out clean. Cool completely.

Frosting: Beat cream cheese and butter until lumps are gone. Combine with vanilla, salt, and powdered sugar, mixing with electric mixer until it’s light and airy. (The longer you mix, the lighter it will be!) Spread on cooled cake. Garnish immediately with chopped pecans to wet frosting.

Birthday Season!

It's birthday season in my family! Well, I say that because of the immediate family, the coolest of us have April/May birthdays (that would be me, my mom and my fellow Taurus niece). WE'RE BOSS.

So my mom's birthday just passed and she requested an utterly boring vanilla cake mix with vanilla buttercream. yawn. But I made baby shower cupcakes for a coworker a few months ago with a new technique that I fell in love with.

Hey, look at this bouquet of roses I got for her birthday.

Fancied Up Chocolate Raspberry

I have a 14 year old nephew that's kind of a foodie. He wants to be a chef. But he also likes a lot of different foods so when I asked him what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday and he said the same chocolate/raspberry one I'd made for another friend before, I wasn't challenged. It was a smidge disappointing. So I went in search of at least prettying it up. I found a beautiful picture on flickr of a chocolate raspberry cake that I've, regrettably, lost the link to. I attempted to duplicate it and didn't quite succeed but my nephew liked it a lot so that was my main goal.

The thing I didn't prepare for was how time consuming every bit of this cake was. From the ganache to cutting the three layers to making the raspberry filling then chocolate buttercream then whipped cream THEN white chocolate marble decoration. so much work. But I'm glad it came out nice. And it was just as yummy as chocolate and raspberry always are. Win!

And it's six layers with three ganache fills and two raspberries. Mmmm!

Italian Cream Cake is coconutty!

My family knows I love baking. They also know that there's nothing I love more than baking BIRTHDAY CAKE. The best thing about birthday cakes is, because they come around every year, my fam usually gives me a challenge and requests something different each time. So I get to try new techniques and recipes AND do something for my loved ones at the same time!

This year, my dad just said coconut cake but I had something special in mind. My friend from work and I share our cooking adventures and recipes with each other and she brought in a piece of this Italian Cream Cake a few months ago from her husband's birthday. It was DIVINE. So moist and coconutty. Auuggghhhh. She generously gave me the recipe and I sat on it, waiting for the perfect time to try it. HULLO, BIRTHDAY!

So, a few things first off: when you combine the baking soda and buttermilk, IT WILL FIZZ. I turned away for five seconds and when I looked back, it had overflowed from my cup. You've been warned! Use bigger than a 1 cup measuring cup.

Second, something in the chemical makeup of this batter cooks the eggs. You'll see pieces of scrambled egg and I don't know what I did to cause it. HOWEVER. I picked out the bigger pieces that made me nervous and baked and you couldn't tell ANYTHING in the final cake. So breathe easy; the egg will disappear!

Third, it'll seem like there's not enough icing for a three layer cake. I spread as thin a layer as possible on the insides (not even going all the way to the edge of the cake) and covered generously over the outside because that's the part that matters. You want the pretty swirliness on the outside. The inside layers were fine! The cake itself is sweet enough that it doesn't need too much icing. It was perfect the way it was!

This delish cake went SO FAST. It was just so gooooood. It's absolutely going on my all-time favorites!


ITALIAN CREAM CAKE


Cake
1/2 cup shortening, room temperature
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
2 cups sugar
5 eggs, room temperature
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 2/3 cup coconut

Icing
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
8 oz cream cheese, room temperature
1 box (~ 4 cups) sifted powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup coconut
1 cup chopped nuts (I used pecans)


1. Blend shortening and butter and sugar until creamy. Blend in egg yolks into mixture.

2. Add baking soda to buttermilk. Stir buttermilk and flour, alternately into egg mixture.

3. Beat egg whites until stiff; add vanilla. Fold stiff egg whites into batter, and then fold in coconut.

4. Divide batter into 3 8 or 9” cake pans that are greased and floured. Bake at 350° for 25-30 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

5. For Icing: Mix butter and cream cheese. Add sugar and vanilla. After mixed, add coconut and chopped nuts. Sprinkle coconut on top of cake after it is frosted. (I did mine just on top but it would look super pretty all the way around the sides too!)

Pig Cake!

Every year I make my mom's birthday cake at the beginning of April and she makes mine at the end. We're both pretty easy to make happy - I like anything pink or with berries and she likes chocolate. This year, she felt like something different and she produced a recipe she'd cut out of the Houston Post over 20 years ago (1987 omg!). It was a cake she'd had at a potluck and *remembered* liking it a lot but couldn't exactly remember why. So she gave the recipe to me and said Make it so!

Personally, I'm a little offended by ~cake mixes. Mostly because sometimes cake mixes are just plain better than homemade. They're so soft and effortlessly fluffy... It's not FAIR. It's cheating! However. This recipe called for a mix which made it super easy to make.

It was also super easy to EAT. They say it's called "Pig Pickin' " because you make a pig of yourself. I will support this claim. We all went back for seconds. I'll keep this cake in rotation, no problem. Mmmm!


PIG PICKIN' CAKE
Adapted from: Ann Valentine

1 package yellow cake mix with pudding
1 11-ounce can mandarin oranges, UNDRAINED
4 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1 (20-ounce) can crushed pineapple, UNDRAINED
1 9-ounce carton frozen whipped topping thawed
1 (3.75-ounce) package vanilla instant pudding mix


Grease two 9-inch layer cake pans. Line bottoms with waxed paper; grease again; set aside. Combine cake mix, mandarin oranges, eggs and oil; beat 2 minutes at highest speed of electric mixer. Reduce speed to low; beat 1 minute. Stir in walnuts. Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake at 350 for 20 to 25 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pans on racks 10 minutes; remove layers from pans, let cool completely.

Combine remaining 3 ingredients; beat 2 minutes at medium speed of electric mixer; let stand 5 minutes in refrigerator or until mixture is of spreading consistency. Spread pineapple mixture between layers and on top of cake - you may frost sides if desired. Chill at least 2 hours before serving. Store in the refrigerator.

Chocolate & Raspberry always works

I saw the movie Hot Fuzz the other day and while it was awesome, one moment stuck out: Nick Frost's character was munching away on a chocolate cake with some sort of red filling. I was asked to make a cake for my friend's birthday and that's the first thing I proposed.

This was another one of those collecting pieces of recipes from all over to create something. I get nervous when I do this; it feels like creating a Frankenstein monster. Who knows if it'll be okay or such a disaster, the townsfolk start gathering their pitchforks. Thankfully, it was the former.

I went with the trusty Ina Garten but, more importantly, a chocolate cake she'd featured in her show from a "Beatty", that had unheard-of positive reviews. 5 stars, almost across the board. And I could very well go to Food Network.com and add my own rave review because this cake was phenomenal. It was moist but not too dense, perfectly chocolately without being overpowering. Absolutely terrific.

Now, for the red filling, I had to start scouring the web in search of what existed in my mind but which I wasn't sure I'd seen materialized outside of a Simon Pegg movie. A few came up that never sounded exactly right but then I finally stumbled on a straightforward Raspberry Filling recipe from Wilton.com, strangely enough. I'd never used any of their recipes before but this appeared so easy and I was going for a simple taste that wouldn't complicate the cake. It came out exactly as I'd hoped, thickened by the corn starch and tart but still sweet and seriously hard to stop eating.

To even out the tartness of the raspberry filling and the richness of the chocolate, I added a layer of whipped cream. Chocolate ganache topped it off and voila! Chocolate raspberry cake! It was a hit with the birthday girl and my family. I was honestly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. It took some time to prepare all the components but it was absolutely worth it!

BEATTY'S CHOCOLATE CAKE WITH RASPBERRY FILLING

Source: Ina Garten

Butter, for greasing the pans

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pans

2 cups sugar

3/4 cups good cocoa powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 cup buttermilk, shaken

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 extra-large eggs, at room temperature

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 cup freshly brewed hot coffee

Chocolate Ganache (recipe follows)

Raspberry Filling (recipe follows)

Whipped cream (recipe follows)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter 2 (8-inch) round cake pans. Line with parchment paper, then butter and flour the pans.

Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and mix on low speed until combined. In another bowl, combine the buttermilk, oil, eggs, and vanilla. With the mixer on low speed, slowly add the wet ingredients to the dry. With mixer still on low, add the coffee and stir just to combine, scraping the bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Pour the batter into the prepared pans and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean. Cool in the pans for 30 minutes, then turn them out onto a cooling rack and cool completely.

Assemble the bottom of the cake, flat side up, with a layer of raspberry filling then whipped cream (recipes follow). Set top cake layer on the filling layers. Refrigerate to set filling layers to cakes.

Make chocolate ganache then let come to room temperature. You may need to let it sit in the fridge as well (continue stirring every five minutes or so to allow to chill evenly). When it is a thick, spreading consistency, spread evenly over cake. It will be a thin layer (ganache is dense and strong) so it is easiest to pour all ganache in the center and slowly work out and down the sides with a flat spatula.

Serve soon or refrigerate if storing. Whipped cream will not keep long.

RASPBERRY FILLING

Adapted from: Wilton.com

1 pkg (16 ounces) frozen raspberries packed in sugar thawed

1/3 cup granulated sugar

3 tablespoons cornstarch

1 teaspoon lemon juice

Makes: Filling serves 2 cups.

Drain raspberries, reserving liquid. Add enough water to liquid to equal 1 1/4 cups.

In large saucepan, combine liquid, sugar, cornstarch and lemon juice; mix well. Heat and stir until mixture boils and thickens. Cool completely.

WHIPPED CREAM

1/2 cup heavy cream, well chilled

1 tbsp confectioners' sugar

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Place a mixing bowl and beaters from electric mixer in the freezer or refrigerator until well chilled, about 15 minutes.

Combine the heavy cream, confectioners' sugar, and vanilla extract in the mixing bowl.

With an electric mixer on low speed, begin beating the cream, gradually increasing the speed to high as cream thickens. (Do this slowly, or the cream will splatter.)

Beat until the cream is thickened, past soft peaks. It should have some structure so it can stand on its own as a layer under the top of the cake.

CHOCOLATE GANACHE

Source: Ina Garten

1/2 cup heavy cream

8 ounces good semisweet chocolate chips

1/2 teaspoon instant coffee granules

Cook the heavy cream, chocolate chips, and instant coffee in the top of a double boiler over simmering water until smooth and warm, stirring occasionally.

I'm back, baby

After my last disappointing baking venture, I took a week or so off then decided to try something new. I settled on something easy but good, fresh for spring and pretty: lemon madeleines. I got everything set up, turned on the oven to preheat, mixed all the dry ingredients, had the eggs broke in a bowl and at room temperature. I'm just about to mix the wet and dry ingredients together when I notice the oven has never beeped that it's preheated. Curiously, I open the door and see that it's dead cold. :-O WUT.

Long story short, two weeks later a new (expensive) part is shipped in and the repair guy restores old [not-so] faithful! IT'S BACK. And I've been DYING to bake for the past two weeks like crazy. Well, tomorrow's the day!!

But before all this happened (the day before, to be exact), I got my mom's birthday cake baked. She wanted something chocolatey and I remembered this cake from last year as rather intense. What I DIDN'T remember was that it calls for deeper pans than I had because it expands a lot. Thankfully, I remembered before the pans went into the oven (I made a mini 6" cake with the extra batter). So. Beware, if you make this. It makes a lot of cake. But moist and yummy! Good the next few days too!

Double Chocolate Layer Cake

Birthday de Moi!

I have an obsession with strawberries, it would seem, since they make me unreasonably happy. I'm sure it stems from childhood stuff (see user pic of Strawberry Shortcake birthday) but I don't care. I asked my mom for a strawberry cake for my birthday last week and this beautiful creation is what she produced. I didn't make it myself so I could exclude it from my food blog but I can't keep the pretty away. PINK!


STRAWBERRY CAKE

• 1 package white cake mix
• 1 package (3 ounces) strawberry-flavored gelatin powder
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil
• 4 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1/4 cup water
• 3/4 cup mashed strawberries or sweetened frozen strawberries

Combine cake mix and gelatin powder in a large bowl. Beat in oil, eggs, water, and strawberries. Pour into 2 9-inch round greased and floured cake pans. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Cool completely before icing.


STRAWBERRY FROSTING

• 1/4 cup butter
• dash of salt
• 1/4 cup shortening
• 1 pound confectioners' sugar
• 1/4 cup mashed strawberries or remaining sweetened frozen strawberries (drain juice)

Beat the butter/shortening and confectioners' sugar together until smooth and fluffy. Add strawberries. Spread between cake layers, then frost top and sides.