KITCHEN MISADVENTURES - CARROT CAKE AND CARROT MUFFINS GIFTS

This recipe for carrot cake, I got from my brother’s current beau who is also a baker herself in Abu Dhabi. But in most sites I browsed, the recipes for carrot cake are more or less similar. The difference lies in the type of sugar used but most of the ingredients are quite the same. The first thing I did (which is the actually the most difficult part of doing the recipe) is to grate the carrots then mix it with the muscovado sugar, raisins and set aside for an hour.

After that I preheated oven to 350F then called my daughter from her room as it was her turn. In a large bowl, my daughter beat the eggs until light and gradually added the white sugar, oil and vanilla. Then she stirred in the pineapple (no crushed in the supermarket so I used tidbits), the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon which I already combined earlier (all dry ingredients). Finally stir in the carrot mixture and walnuts. Pour the mix evenly onto a 10-inch cake pan but in our case we only had one pan so I used muffin pans with the rest of the mixture.

I was the one who popped the pan into the turbo boiler for 45 minutes and the cupcakes for 20 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. We let the cake cool for about thirty minutes before frosting with cream cheese frosting.

For the frosting, we used 2 eight-ounce packages of cream cheese frosting (softened) creamed together with 1/2 c butter (also softened). Then we added 1 tsp vanilla and 2 cups of confectioners’ sugar into the mixer until the cream cheese is a bit fluffy. The frosting was then applied evenly on the cake while on the muffins, the icing was piped on top and decorated with chocolate chips n sprinkles. Truth to tell, baking has become a very vital bonding experience for us – my 2 children and I. What’s best is when we jostle around to eat the cake mix after it has left the pan and only a few dribbles are left on the bowl and on the beaters/spoons used. Yup...we definitely have fun not just in making and decorating the cakes/cupcakes but also in eating them afterwards...

P.S. The cake was packed (with the round glass dish included) to my father as a Christmas present (turns out though that he is not really fond of carrots, so I need to remember that hehehe) While the muffins were given to my mother.