Super Moist Carrot Cake

Could it be that "retro" is making a comeback in the baking world? Maybe it's the influence of a recent delightful visit to The Tea Parlour for a friend's 21st (review soon to follow, hopefully!), but lately, I've been craving simple tea cakes, scones, and slices - basically, the stuff you find in a Australian Women's Weekly cookbook. And so it was in the spirit of "everything old is new again" that I made this delicious and super moist carrot cake.

The carrot cake and I go waaay back. In fact, it was the first cake that I baked from scratch, as the final assessment for a Design and Technology course in Year 8. I remember that class very clearly. In the weeks leading up to it, we'd been put through the paces in basic cookery with various old-school Aussie favourites: chocolate chip cookies, butterfly cakes, etc. For our assessment, we were given an hour and a half to complete a recipe of our choice, working in groups of threes. Come to think of it, it was kinda like a Masterchef team challenge!

Anyway, the carrot cake turned out fantastically, and the cream cheese frosting left so deep an impression on my naive palate that it remains my favourite type of frosting to this day. My fellow team members and I proudly presented a generous slice of cake to the lovely ladies down at reception. The rest we split between the three of us. As I recall, it was a GINORMOUS cake that we made, and my share lasted for days.

And so I have very fond memories of the carrot cake. This particular one wasn't frosted due to time constraints, but I imagine that the maple cream cheese frosting I made for my browned butter apple pound cake a while back would have been perfect for this. The recipe I used for this carrot cake utilised ghee instead of the usual vegetable oil. I do believe that either choice would be fine in the cake. I would describe the texture of this cake as extremely moist; almost pudding like. I was worried that it would be too sweet when I tasted the batter (raw eggs don't scare me! xD), but the baked cake was not very sweet at all. Which means that you can pile on the cream cheese frosting extra thick!

Recipe for a Super Moist Carrot Cake

Adapted from Guilty Kitchen

Recipe yields one 22cm x 12cm loaf AND 7 cupcakes, OR one 9-inch two-layer cake

Ingredients

2 cups cake flour
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated white sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp powdered ginger
1 tsp salt
4 eggs
1 cup ghee, melted
1/3 cup buttermilk (or 1/3 cup whole milk + 1 tsp apple cider vinegar)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
2 1/2 cups finely grated carrot (I used five carrots)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees Celsius (or 350 degrees Fahrenheit). Grease and flour a 22cm x 12cm loaf tin, or line it with aluminium foil. You can reserve leftover batter for another thinner loaf, or make cupcakes out of it.

2. In a bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, and baking powder. Stir in the brown sugar, white sugar, ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, powdered ginger and salt. Use the back of the spoon to break up any lumps formed by the brown sugar.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs into the melted ghee, one by one. Whisk in the buttermilk, vanilla extract and vanilla bean paste. Stir in the grated carrots.

4. Combine the dry and wet ingredients, and mix until incorporated and smooth. Be careful not to overmix.

5. Pour the batter into the loaf tin, filling it 3/4 full.

6. Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour, or until skewer inserted into centre of the loaf comes out clean. If the top of your cake gets too brown, cover the cake loosely with a piece of foil for the final 10 minutes of baking.

7. Once done baking, remove from oven and allow cake to cool in tin for 10 minutes. Remove from tin, and let cake finish cooling off on a cooling rack.

To make cupcakes:


1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees Celsius (or 350 degrees Fahrenheit).

2. Line muffin tray with cupcake liners.

3. Fill liners 3/4 full with batter.

4. Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes.

5. Allow cupcakes to cool in tray for 10 minutes, before attempting to move them onto cooling racks.

The Happiness Cake

I wouldn't go so far as to call myself a pessimist, but there are certainly times when I fail to see the silver lining in anything. It's usually a case of wallowing in self-pity, and I get over my bouts of folly and narcissism quickly enough. Nothing cheers me up quite like baking a cake, and taking my time decorating it. Sometimes I get accused of wasting precious time by experimenting with swiss meringue buttercream, or building a gingerbread house, when I could have been studying, or cleaning my room, or doing some other 'not meaningless' thing. My only retort is that people have different ways of dealing with stress. Some people go get drunk. Others turn to retail therapy. I play with nonpareils and silver dragees.

This cake proved to be the ultimate stress-buster. For starters, it's hard to obsess over the ever-increasing pile of uni work when you're positioning each dragee with a pair of chopsticks (the only tweezers I own are the ones in my dissection kit). And then there's the anticipation of tucking into a slice of chocolate cake in bed right before lights-out on a Sunday night; a prophylactic dose of sugar before the weekday crazies start anew.

(Yes, I eat in bed. Nigella Lawson said it was okay, so cease your disapproving muttering at once!)

 

So, what's with the "B"? No, this isn't some homage to Nathaniel Hawthorne, or an attempt at disguising my shoddy frosting skills (okay, maybe a little of the latter). This cake is actually for my sister to take to her school chapel service on Sunday, and the "B" is the first letter of the name of the House she is in. Since everyone in her House will be bringing something to the service, I have no doubts that there'll be chocolate cake left over. But if this Happiness Cake proves to be especially popular, I'll make sure that the sister saves me a slice for my planned cake-eating-in-bed.

Some other things which make me HAPPY:

Macarons!

Flowers!

And some more flowers.

Beautiful views.

Eating pieces of the beautiful view (a shard of glacier in this case).

Fruit in bulk.

Jumping in fields of gold.

And, of course, cupcakes.

So...what makes you happy? ;D

So, recently...(the Reader's Digest version)

Salutations! As much as I would love to sit down and type out a long and detailed recount of all my fabulous eats over the past few weeks, I still have two huge exams to get through before the holidays. Despite being basically house-bound in the weeks leading up to my first exam, I did manage to squeeze in some nice yummies. I find eating to be quite a good coping mechanism (not to mention procrastination device xD). It's like: oh, stuff it all, who cares about [insert complex scientific concept], I'm gonna get me a big ol' slice of CHOCOLATE MUDCAKE.

Chocolate mudcake from Pasticceria Papa



And another one -

Chocolate mudcake from Pasticceria Sulfaro

Believe it or not, I actually acquired both of these on the same day, to be eaten on the same day. Let's just say I was in a very self-destructive state of mind at the time; blame it on all those disease flowcharts I had to cram into my limited brain space!

While we're on the topic of chocolate, I developed an addiction to Lindt Excellence 85% Cocoa last week. I admit to having a weird obsessive-compulsive personality where I get fixated on one kind of food for a period of time, where I would keep eating it day-in, day-out, until I get sick of the taste. Don't be shocked by this next picture - they were on sale at Woolworths! In the week leading up to my second exam, I (no joke) ate a whole bar every. single. day. It was very liberating...

Note: only the 85% bars were on special; I bought the 99% ones from the Lindt cafe in Martin Place. They're half the size and double the price of the regular bars, so I couldn't afford to develop an addiction to them!

Being a good big sister, I somehow managed to bake and ice 165 cupcakes for my sister to take to her grade at school as part of her birthday celebration. There I was, smothering vanilla cupcakes with thick, buttery icing in semi-darkness, with only my iPad screen (showing my study notes) as the only source of illumination. Good times.

Ahem, yes, I was inspired for the design of these from a well-known cupcakery in Surry Hills...

What else, what else? Ooh, that's right - I turned 21 years old! I celebrated it with a dinner out with friends and family. My birthday cake was a whole ricotta cheesecake from Pasticceria Papa (my goodness, do I love that place or what?)

More recently, I went and had brunch at 2042 Deli & Cafe in Newtown with an old friend who happened to be in Sydney (she studies interstate). It was a delicious affair, and the joy of her company made the food taste all the better.

Perfectly poached eggs in 2042 Deli & Cafe's Eggs Benedict.

Okay, I can no longer stand the voice in my head screaming at me to "GO STUDY", so this is where I will end the entry. Will write in more detail once these exams are over! (soon...soon...)

Birthday cupcakes!

Hey y'all! My baby brother's and youngest sister's birthdays happen to fall on consecutive weekends in April, which means my parents are always super hasselled during that time trying to get their parties organised (because kids these days simply have to have birthday parties *rolls eyes*) , and calling up every. single. patisserie in Sydney in an attempt to find the perfect cake for the event.

I exaggerate, but only by a little bit. Seriously, ordering a cake can be quite stressful business! And so very expensive these days. I would of course love to make the cake for each sibling's birthday (I have another younger sister), but somehow I am always the busiest with uni assignments and exams during the period they have their parties.

This year, I was determined to offer at least something to the party table, even if I didn't have the time to make the centrepiece. For my brother's birthday, I whipped up four dozen chocolate cupcakes (devil's food, to be exact), all topped with a luxurious swiss meringue buttercream frosting. The colours of the frosting were chosen to accompany his birthday cake, which was made by the talented Rochelle of Candystar Cakes & Candy Bar. It was a very impressive fondant-covered 3D cake, modelled after Lightning McQueen, of Cars fame.

Unfortunately, the prettiest cakes aren't always the tastiest ones to eat. I'm talking fondant-covered cakes in general here. And it always seems an awful waste when it comes time to chuck out the fondant (which most people don't eat because of its tooth-ache inducing sweetness). Hmm, maybe one day someone will come up with a sort of rolled icing that actually tastes good. Buddy Valastro, owner of Carlos' Bakery and star of Cake Boss, seem to use a lot of modelling chocolate in his cakes. I wonder if that tastes better than fondant.

Anyway, the cake and cupcakes were still a hit with all the children and adults at the party :D

For my sister's birthday the following week, I made cupcakes that were less flashy than the ones for my brother, but (in my opinion) had the upper hand taste-wise.

I made two types: in front, we have the infamous chocolate chip cookie dough cupcake (the recipe or which I got from The Doctor's Dishes), and in the second row are oreo cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting (an adapted recipe of the one at Annie's Eats).

For the sake of parity, we also ordered her a 3D cake from Rochelle, this time in the shape of a designer handbag! Kids these days...my 10th birthday cake was in the shape of Snoopy!

Stylish, eh?

The birthday girl and her friends had a great time eating cake. Lots of it :D

Green Tea Cupcakes

Recently, I purchased a modest-sized bag of green tea (matcha) powder with the intent of trying out some of the recipes I've seen over at my favourite baking sites. I'm a huge fan of the green tea flavour, and would paint my bedroom walls, floor and ceiling the same colour. And trust me, were it not for the fear of being made to sleep in the dog house while my parents hired paint removers and had my room restored to its usual, drab cream-and-rose colour scheme, my humble dwellings would already resemble the inside of a green tea cupcake. This one, in fact.

How was that for a segue? I feel that I ought to apologise in advance for the future incidences of incorrect grammar, unsophisticated expression and unsound logic that are bound to pop up in my posts ahead. Blogging for a public audience is quite a new experience for me; prior to this, I've only had the pleasure of jotting down my jumbled, semi-coherent thoughts for my own viewing, and that of a few friends who actually care about what I ate for breakfast, or my discovery of new yoghurt brands, or my thoughts on the latest episode of NCIS (big fan, BIG FAN).

But this, this public blogging thing - this is much, much more exciting :D

You may have noticed an odd straggler masquerading (unsuccessfully) as a cupcake in the picture above. That is, in fact, a steamed hedgehog bun that my grandmother made using some leftover dough from my second baking project: Piggy Buns, recipe courtesy of Lorraine from Not Quite Nigella!

 

The making of these adorable (and disturbingly edible) creatures will be detailed in a post to come. For now, let us concentrate on these matcha beauties.

I purposely chose a recipe that involved cake flour, since I've never worked with the stuff before and wanted to see for myself whether it truly made for a softer, crumblier and tastier cake. From the three that I, ahem, taste-tested, I can vouch for the effectiveness of combining cake flour with all-purpose plain flour in the recipe compared to only all-purpose plain flour when it comes to making cupcakes. To all the Aussie readers: This (see below) was the only brand I could find in a major supermarket. Are there any other (cheaper) versions available in Australia?

I ended up adjusting a vanilla cupcake recipe from Billy's Bakery which I found on Kwanster's website, adding in three tablespoons of green tea powder to the dry ingredients. I was initially worried about the vanilla essence masking the flavour of the green tea. However, my concerns proved to be unfounded; the green tea flavour was unmistakably present. I also used a method of combining ingredients which I've found to give the best rise to cupcakes.

Recipe for Green Tea Cupcakes
Ingredients (adapted from Billy's vanilla vanilla cupcakes on Kwanster's site)

Makes 30 cupcakes

• 1 cup (2 sticks or 227g) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch cubes
• 2 cups caster sugar
• 1 3/4 cups cake flour, not self-rising
• 1 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoon green tea (matcha) powder
• 4 large eggs
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• A few drops green food colouring (optional)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160°C (or 325°F).

2. Using a spatula, cream together the softened but still solid butter (I microwaved mine for 10 seconds straight out of the fridge) and the caster sugar until there are no visible sugar lumps. Using an electric beater, cream the butter and sugar at an high speed until light and fluffy.

3. In another bowl, combine the cake flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder, salt, and green tea powder. You can sift the dry ingredients if you want to. I personally never bother with a sieve, and I haven't ended up with lumps of flour or salt in my cakes (yet).

4. In yet another bowl, combine the milk and vanilla extract.

5. Into the creamed butter and sugar add the eggs, one at a time and beating with electric beater until just incorporated between each addition.

6. Once the eggs have all been mixed in, you can put everything in the three bowls together! Add the dry ingredients and milk to the butter/sugar/egg mixture in turns, alternating between the two, beating well after each addition.

7. Give it a final beating on high power until everything is nice and fluffy (rather than liquidy, which is a sign that you've either added wrong amounts of ingredients or have overbeaten the mixture). At this point, you can add in a few drops of green food colouring if you think the natural greenness of the matcha isn't showing that well.

8. Line tins with cupcake cases. Fill cases with batter until three-quarters full. The cupcakes should rise in the oven!

9. Bake for 17 to 20 minutes, checking after 17 minutes by inserting a toothpick into the cupcake and seeing if it comes out cleanly. If it does, the cupcakes are done baking and ready to be taken out of the oven and transferred to wire racks to cool.

10. You can frost the cupcakes with a frosting of choice after they've cooled completely. I find frosted cupcakes too rich for casual snacking (of which I do plenty!), and prefer to munch on them as is. But there are some wonderful recipes for red bean frosting out there, and everyone knows that red bean + green tea = a flavour match made in paradise.

 

The cupcakes were soft, not too sweet, and had a distinctive but not overbearing green tea flavour. Do try and tell me how they turn out!