Prepping for a Party

So I made a cake today. NBD. Except it was. This was the first time I’ve ever made a cake (and frosting) from scratch! It was quite a process and I learned a lot along the way. It was so much fun and I am so happy with the result I wanted to share my first cake baking adventure with you guys!

So this isn’t just any cake, its a cake for a very important person! 😀 Josh’s birthday is Thursday and I’m heading to State College tomorrow afternoon to celebrate it with him. I am so excited and wanted to make him his favorite cake to celebrate.

The recipe for Sam’s Famous Carrot Cake:

3 eggs

3/4 cup buttermilk (I substituted skim, I have never noticed a difference in taste doing this with baked goods.)

3/4 cup vegetable oil (I substituted sunflower oil to make it a little healthier.)

1 1/2 cups white sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 cups shredded carrots

1 cup flaked coconut

1 cup chopped walnuts

1 (8 ounce) can crushed pineapple with juice

1 cup raisins

For this recipe I strongly recommend getting full sized carrots to shred, or even pre-shredded carrots. If you were not thinking when you went to the grocery store and ended up getting a bag of baby carrots like I did, before you do anything else get down to business shredding two cups of those things. Its going to take a while and you’re going to lose a layer of skin on your thumb. Lesson learned.

After the carrots are good to go (2 cups equals about half a bag of baby carrots) preheat your oven to 350 and oil and flour your pan. I used a 10 inch springform cake pan that I brushed olive oil onto and then rubbed two tablespoons of flour onto so that my cake wouldn’t stick. I loved using the springform because the sides popped off super easily afterwards. The downside is that if you’re using an older springform pan that isn’t lined up perfectly (like mine is) you may experience dripping. I’d recommend checking this before you put the cake into the oven or you might have to deal with burning puddles of carrot cake setting off the smoke alarm in your kitchen. If this does happen to you, after a thorough oven scrubbing place the springform pan in a larger pan to catch the drips. Once the cake starts cooking it will stop dripping through. You won’t lose much cake but it will still be a very big pain in the butt. Lesson learned.

Now that you have tons of tips on what not to do, once you preheat your oven and have your pan greased and good to go you want to sift together the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a bowl.

In a separate bowl combine the eggs, milk, oil, sugar and vanilla. Mix well. Then combine this with the flour mixture and mix well.

In another bowl combine the shredded carrots, coconut, walnuts, pineapple and raisins.

Mix them all up.

And then add both mixtures together, making sure to fold in well.

Go ahead and pour into your baking pan and then cook for an hour.

After an hour you will have the most amazing looking cake and your whole house will smell like warm carrot cake. Heaven.

Oh, and a whole lot of dishes!

I also made a frosting for the carrot cake. This one was really highly rated and looked easy to make.

The recipe for Cream Cheese Frosting II:

2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup butter, softened

2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

This one is super simple. Mix together the cream cheese and butter, then add the vanilla extract and blend before adding the sugar and blending again.

So simple and so tasty! And I have leftovers for the pumpkin mookies I’m making tomorrow morning for Josh’s parents.

My first homemade cake! 🙂 Lets hope it tastes as good as it looks! I’m off to go finish wrapping presents and getting things ready for tomorrow. I’ll be making a post mid-day tomorrow (Thursday) before I go MIA for the weekend, so make sure to stop by to check it out!

Question of the Day: (This was inspired by my Consumer Behavior class today.) If you could be invisible for 24 hours what would you do? I’d hop a plane to Europe and go explore! You only need to be invisible to get on the plane! ;p