cake 19 whiskey spiked chocolate cake, the wicked and the damned

posted a preview photo of the wicked and the damned cake on facebook, where it quickly earned a following.

the clever name was a mis-typing. The blogger at Poires au Chocolat, where this cake originates, created her gorgeous version of this grown-up cake for an art competition themed The Beautiful and the Damned. She entered a cake—brilliant, brilliant—inspired by 20s era America. As she writes:

“Do not be fooled by the innocent exterior of this cake: underneath the chocolate Art Nouveau design and the cloud of all-American vanilla buttercream lies a dark, dense chocolate cake soaked with whisky and sandwiched with an intense chocolate and thick cream ganache spiked with more whisky. It is a cake for the prohibition, a wicked core hidden underneath a respectable façade.”

and quotes:

“I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.”
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald. (Nick’s thoughts, while drunk on whisky)

love anyone who works out a cake around a narrative and her nouveau styled chocolate décor glamorizes the potent interior; hidden evil and all that.

in the radical muffin kitchen, however, we were making 3 sets of cake and did not, at this time, pipe out intricate chocolate designs. We went for a more blatantly slatternly look, with whiskey saturated ganache oozing wantonly out the sides, and buttercream piped in starbursts glittering on top. Given this and the comments on facebook—Lawd-a-mercy!; You are my soulmate.; That’s like five of the seven deadly sins baked into one cake! (if you eat it while having sex, maybe you can get up to six?)—the wicked and the damned seems to suit this version.

the cake is genoise-ish European style, dry for soaking with syrup. Heat the oven to 350° and line cake pans with parchment paper and butter them. We used three small heart pans, trimming the tops off two cakes for the bottom layers. The top slices to be repurposed.

melt 300 grams of dark chocolate. This is a lot of chocolate, and we admit to dashing up to the neighbor’s kitchen to use the microwave rather than our typical bowl on a pan of water method. If you take the slow road, chop your chocolate up to make it go a bit quicker.  Let rest and cool while making the rest of the batter.

cream together 1 cup/2 sticks of soft butter with a cup and a half of sugar; we used ½ white and ½ turbinado sugars. Beat in 5 eggs (room temperature) one at a time then beat the lot until creamy and golden. Sift in 1 ¼ teaspoon of baking powder, ¼ teaspoon of salt, and 1 ½ cups of flour—we used 1 cup of all purpose and ½ cup of cake flour and snuck in 2 tablespoons of dutch processed cocoa. Stir in the melted and cooled chocolate.

pour the batter into the awaiting cake pans and bake for about half an hour, checking at 21 minutes and depending on the size of your cake pans. Let cool in the pans a few minutes and turn out to cool completely.

in a small saucepan, simmer together a cup and a half of whiskey and ½ a cup of sugar until the liquid reduces in half and thickens. Pour into a measuring cup and let cool completely. Stir in another ¾ cup of whiskey. We used a really beautiful golden honey whiskey.

drizzle the boozy syrup over the cakes (trimmed as you like). Thus soaked, the cakes can be wrapped and stashed in the freezer or fridge until wanted. Or forge right ahead.

melt 10 ounces dark chocolate with ½ a cup of heavy cream over low heat, stirring until smooth. Let cool just a bit and splash in some whiskey – about ¼ cup.  Slowly pour and spread over the bottom layer. Let set a moment and top with middle cake. Pour and spread the remaining ganache over this layer. Let set a moment and top with the final layer.

in a big glass bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, whisk together one egg white with a ½ cup of white sugar until shiny white and warm to the touch. Remove from the stovetop. Scrape in the innards of a vanilla bean and beat in ¾ a stick of butter. Add confectioners sugar if needed to reach a thick, pipe-able consistency.

frost the top as pleases you. We made these little starry puffballs one by one, beginning at the center and working our way to the edges. Had just enough frosting, which is a nice change of having a whole container of left over frosting.

serve to seduce.

 

cake 18 orange upside down cake eleganza*

caramelizing fruit and baking in a cast iron skillet, to make an upside down cake is a perfect fit for radical muffin sensibilities. Pineapple is classic, of course, but the possibilities are vast. In the winter markets, citrus is reigning, so we piled perfect blood oranges, pink oranges and baby oranges still dressed in their leaves into the basket to carry home to become cake.

when we were in high school, the vending machine outside the cafeteria held shiny wrapped rolls of Daily-C. Someone from our table would buy a roll—an offering— bring it back to the table, and pass it round: “Don’t get scurvy,” we’d say, like a blessing. Spin-off humor from some horror story in history class; popping the vitamins like candy.

if it’s oranges it must be good for you—not to be confused with food group orange, comprised of the orange things like Doritos, nacho cheese and Crush—so we recommend this cake for breakfast. Mimosas or Bellinis at brunch elevate it to eleganza, yes?

five small oranges provided enough rounds for an 8-inch skillet. Slice the peel from the fruit and reserve it for something else like hot toddies or mulled wine; throw them in a bag in the freezer if not using right away. With a long serrated bread knife, slice the oranges into thin wheels.

separate 4 cold eggs and let them hang out to warm up.

melt 4 tablespoons of butter with ¾ cup of light brown sugar in a cast iron skillet and bubble away for about 3 minutes. If you have them, a few crushed cardamom seeds added now and picked out later are lovely. Allow to rest a few minutes then lay the fruit in concentric circles in the pan. Heat the oven to 350°.

the cake recipe we used called for a 10-inch skillet. We meant to pour off some of the batter as cupcakes but forgot. The utterly full pan baked up just fine, and although the cake to fruit ratio was greater, the cake is delicious and no one is complaining.

sift together 1 ½ cups of all purpose flour, 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder and ¼ teaspoon salt. Cream together a stick of soft butter and ½ cup white and ½ cup turbinado sugar. Beat in the egg yolks. Grate in the zest of an orange and a lime.  Beat in the sifted flour along with 3 tablespoons of cornmeal and 2/3 cup of milk.

clean your beaters scrupulously, and whip the egg whites until soft peaks form. Fold half of the egg whites into the batter then carefully fold in the other half. Pour the batter over the fruit, smooth and bake for about 45 minutes, until the cake is golden and set.

let cool in the pan for about 10 minutes then turn out onto a plate. You want to flip it while it is still a bit warm or all that gooey, caramel fruit will stick to the pan. Boooooooo….

with a successful flip—cake self decorated with gloriously sugared fruit. Relax and enjoy.

*in nod to the new season of RuPaul’s Drag Race xoxo

cake 16 last cupcakes of the year

weird sugar. that’s all – to practice weird sugar, I made cupcakes. A two-day commitment, including dinner in the workshop – that’s a chili of three white beans there – to form the birds (!) and hearts and stars in royal icing and let them harden. Then the cakes…

buttermilk cake is the thing to do most of the time.

see fondant is fabulous and Viking cake.

for these little buggers, I subbed in greek yogurt and fresh cream, about ½ cup yogurt and ¼ cup of cream, for the buttermilk. thus no longer buttermilk cake technically but it is the same recipe ever changing. love it.

pre-heat the oven to 375° and line muffin tins with papers. We used one regular sized muffin pan and one mini-muffin pan, each holding a dozen muffins.

cream a stick of soft butter with 1 cup of white sugar until really light and fluffy. Beat in 2 large eggs and the yogurt-cream. Scrape in the seeds of a vanilla bean and the zest of two small oranges and a lemon. We used blood oranges, squeezing in just a bit of juice too. Sift in 1 ½ cups of cake flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, and ¼ teaspoon baking soda and salt.

spoon the batter into the muffin cups, filling each ¾ way . Bake for approximately 15 minutes for mini-muffins and 20 minutes for the larger size.

let cool completely.

whip up buttercream, simple: one stick of soft butter, two cups sifted powdered sugar, vanilla bean seeds and orange zest, adding a bit of orange juice to thin as needed.

The blood orange juice turns the icing a pale sunset peach color, fairy cake pretty with the flecks of vanilla and finished later with glitter. Beat beat beat until fluffy as a kitten.

the large cupcakes are piped with buttercream in a spiral through a star tip. Some of the small cakes are piped with tiny buttecream starbursts, and some are dipped in thin royal icing.

it was only in the photo shoot that I realized these are the cupcakes bidding adieu to this year. i am grateful for the exceptional gifts it has brought me. thank you for gracing my virtual kitchen with your reading.

may you eat well, with much joy.

11 cake: ménage à génoise

an experiment to bake my batter of obsession in a standard cake pan rather than a rimmed baking sheet as in a jelly roll and for mini-cakes.

mini-cakes themselves have become an obsession. One set sporting my virgin attempt at fondant. Photos are up on the facebook page; please like radical muffin to feast on bonus food porn. And i will try to catch up on the writing!

however—this is the brief season of quince, and quince insists upon a full sized cake. Most quince insist on a pavlova; these acquiesced to taking part in the great cake adventure.

the fruit, rock hard when raw and ripe, is apple-ish in shape, yellow as canary, and covered in a fine fuzz that every recipe recommends rubbing off even though you peel the skin off. The rubbing is meditative, a knowing of each fruit, and that has something to be said for it.

quarter and core the acerbic and hard orbs; halve or quarter the quarters. In a saucepan of appropriate size, bring to boil enough water to eventually cover the fruit slices. Sprinkle in a cup or so of sugar. Add a dash of salt if you are in the spirit of adding salt to everything. Maybe a squeeze of lemon. Add the fruit, cover and bring to a boil.

quince holds legend as the golden apple Paris awarded Helen and tempted Eve. A cake of quince from your kitchen is hopefully unlikely to end in war or expulsion from the Garden. The perfume of it will evoke this sort of divine allure. Quince are in the rose family, and smell like Arabian Nights.

lift the lid and inhale. Steam your face. Dream. As they poach they’ll blush pink. Cook until soft. Drain, set aside the fruit, and return the liquid to the pan and cook down until it is syrupy enough to suit your purposes.

in this cake, quince comes three ways: a layer each of smashed quince and quince curd in the filling and quince syrup in the pink butter cream.

the cake is génoise—the alluring vanilla speckled egg-voluptuous batter currently on call in the radical muffin kitchen. There were actually two quince cakes. The first a pile of quince slices in the center of a cake cooked in a single layer in a round cake pan for about 23 minutes. The custardy center worked with the fruit pile and the sides had a nice cake crust to frost with a thin ring of vanilla butter cream.

for this layer cake, each lawyer was baked in a heart shaped cake pan for about the same about of time creating a delightfully cakey cake.

8 cake: rosemary remembrance

“look at my flowers. There’s rosemary, that’s for remembering. Please remember, love. And there are pansies, they’re for thoughts.” ~ ophelia, Hamlet

this cake usually emerges on new year’s eve, when poetics honor the turning of the clock in the dead of winter, remembering, letting go, renewing, hope.  So delicious, this simple loaf has been in request since the snow fell on the green leaves of Brooklyn. Arising from my long lost nigella cookbook collection and resurrected by mouth from my favorite kitchen witch, in a sultry reading of the recipe from her copy.

ritually, i try to peel the apple skin away in one curling strip with a paring knife, then slice pieces of flesh off one apple into a small saucepan where two tablespoons of butter is melting. Break in two small sprigs off rosemary. These were grown in a big blue-green ceramic pot on our porch. Add 1 tablespoon of sugar— superfine for élan, turbinado for ennui. Zest one lemon over the pile up; slice it and squeeze in the juice from half. Cover and simmer until the apples begin falling apart, stirring every few minutes. Turn off the heat and let sit.

butter and line a loaf pan with parchment paper and butter it again.

meanwhile, in your best big bowl, beat together two sticks of butter (minus the 2 tablespoons for the applesauce) with ¾ cup of sugar , matching the kind you put in the apples, which you can also beat in once they’re not steaming hot.

beat in three eggs, one at a time. Add a shot of vanilla if you are feeling it. Beat in two cups of all purpose flour sifted together with two teaspoons of baking powder. A heaping teaspoon of sea salt if you used the coarser sugar. Pour the batter into the loaf pan. Place a long, fine sprig of rosemary down the center of the cake. Sprinkle the entire top and spring with superfine sugar.

pop in the oven and bake for a little over three quarters of an hour, until a golden crust forms and the center is set. Remove from the oven to a cooling rack to rest in the pan for a few minutes. Flip, turn again onto a serving plate. This is one of those cakes that can quietly join you for breakfast, dress up for dinner, and accompany tea through the week if you can keep it. Make two.

5 cake: 771 peanut butter chocolate loaf cake

while cake from a boxed mix proved ill-advised, cake blitzed together in a food processor carried the day for modern convenience. Mindfully assembling the ingredients and greasing the loaf pan takes longer than whirring the batter, with a completely respectable crumb resulting.

squib & the preacher eater pickler both requested peanut butter chocolate cakes when the great cake adventure embarked. Sunny Meadows coming to dinner for the first visit to the new place called for a cake manifestation of the household tastes. Voilà—a quadruple chocolate loaf cake with peanut butter chips resplendent with gold glitter and bronze dust.

beginning with Nigella’s recipe for quadruple loaf cake, i added peanut butter chips and soaked with the Hershey’s syrup left from the marbled Bundt. Having not made the chocolate syrup from scratch, there’s nothing to compare, yet i think in this instance my preference here might still be the taste of nostalgia from the standard can.

heat the oven to 325˚ with a baking sheet set on the middle rack. Cut parchment paper to line the bottom of a loaf pan; line and grease the pan well with butter.

haul out your food processor if you got one.

if not you can still beat this together with a hand mixer or wooden spoon and a strong shoulder by creaming the butter and sugar, adding the eggs then the dry ingredients with the boiling water.

let 2 eggs and 1 ½ sticks of butter come to room temperature. sift together 1 2/3 cups all purpose flour, ½ cup cocoa, and a ½ teaspoon of baking soda. Measure out 1/3 cup of sour cream or yogurt, 1 ½ cups mixed frozen peanut butter chips and semisweet chocolate chunks, ½ cup of boiling water, and 1 1/3 cup of sugar; i used half brown sugar half white.

dump the butter and sugar into the processor then pulse a few times. Add in everything else except the water and chips. Pulse and pour the boiling water through the chimney of the processor lid until all is battery. Fold in chips. Pour into the pan.

bake for about 45 minutes, until just not quite set through. Put it on a cooling rack and poke some holes in it. A chopstick works well for this. Drizzle chocolate syrup of your choice (perhaps spiked) into the holes without being too neat about it.

let the cake cool. Meanwhile, over at the stovetop, bring ½ a cup of cream to boil in a small saucepan. Turn of the heat and whisk in 6 oz bittersweet chocolate until melted and smooth.

when the cake is cool, turn it out of the pan. A bit of parchment paper over your hand keeps chocolate syrup off you—we love parchment paper sandwich bags for all kinds of things, including this little task. When the ganaché is firm enough to be piped, spoon it into a pastry bag or craftily turned piece of parchment paper fitted with a star tip. Pipe the chocolate in stripes over horizontally over the loaf. Sprinkle with glitter and shimmer dust.

4 cake: lardy cake

a majestic looking Bundt was intended to be cake #4. As exciting as it was to unearth some Bundt history, and as photogenic the packaging and final cake, the pistachio chocolate marble cake – a recipe of cake mixes and boxed pudding offered up as characteristic of Bundt in its heyday – was, well, gassy. At least, it made me gassy. It tasted synthetic. The flavors sounds so grand, promise to capture the nature with real food in a future effort (catch the photos by liking Radical Muffin on Facebook).

this futile venture into boxes sent me right back to real butter. Enter lardy cake. no Pillsbury bake-off winner here; no showboating. Lovingly offered up by Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra in her tour of old world breads and sweets Warm Bread and Honey Cake, lardy cake is a British stalwart dating back to the second half of the 19^th century.

a harvest cake of freshly rendered pig lard, original recipes earned the name. up-dated versions rely on butter, and real slabs of fresh butter here are a real celebratory ingredient in city hearths, evocative of generous bounty, novel in its old-fashioned rich goodness.

Pagrach-Chandra is a staunch defender of lardy cake. writing from a hostile health-conscious environment in the modern UK, she cites critics’ warnings of “health hazard” and “artery clogger” then scoffs: I suspect that many of its detractors would not hesitate to pour cream sauce over a huge steak on a regular basis, yet they begrudge the bit of butter that goes into an excellent cake. Perhaps they simply do not like cakes.

radical muffins only live once, and butter is delicious. Lardy cake is an utterly worthy breakfast or coffee treat, a cinnamon roll all in one cake round that you slice to eat. Not only a great cake—in the vein of not too sweet coffee cakes—but also a good introduction to bread make. So take this on if working with bread is among your desired kitchen skills but its seemed too daunting to start.

in a large bowl, stir in a packet of dried yeast into half of ¾ cup warmed milk. Let the yeast come to life. Melt 3/8 a stick of butter, stir in a tablespoon of sugar, and set it aside to cool.

stir 2 ½ cups flour along with the rest of the milk and the butter. knead knead knead until the dough is smooth and elastic. leave to rise an hour or so, until doubled in size.

butter and line the bottom of a 9-ich spring form pan.

punch down the dough and knead in ¼ teaspoon of salt. pat the dough into a circle and sandwich between two long pieces of parchment paper or lay out on a well-floured surface. Roll out until about ¼ inch thick.

cream together 7/8 of a stick of butter, unsalted and softened, and 1/3 cup of dark brown sugar. work in ½ teaspoon cinnamon and ¼ teaspoon nutmeg.

spread the sugar-butter on 2/3 of the rectangle of dough, leaving a margin at all the edges. Sprinkle the buttered areas with 1/3 – ½ cup currants or raisins and lightly press them into the filling with the palm of your hand. Fold the dough over the filling like a burrito, taking care to seal the edges. Let rest for 5 minutes.

turn the dough for a fresh angle. Roll out the pastry burrito to form a slightly smaller rectangle. Fold again and let rest. Repeat 2 or 3 more times, depending on how much the filling begins to ooze. Less maybe more here; this cake may have benefited from one less turn or a sit in the fridge to firm up the butter.

on the final turn, roll the cake into a circle and pat into place in the pan. Leave for a final rise, letting the dough double in size.

preheat your oven to 350˚ and bake your lardy cake for 25-30 minutes. Pull it out and leave to rest 15 in the pan then turn it out to cool. Enjoy now or later. Quietly rejoice.

viking cake for chocolate lovers

An offer to make a cake themed on a child’s latest passion—in this case, Vikings—is a serious thing. When I embarked, I did not know a serpent prow from the curly tail thing. The end result passed muster, and the birthday child, who was impressed at the unveiling, has declared the serpent prow his own to eat.

The ship is devil’s food cake, baked in a shallow layer in a loaf pan. Frosted with chocolate buttercream with chocolate ganache on the deck. The prow and stern are gingerbread, decorated with royal icing, black food coloring and bronze luster dust.

The ocean is a vanilla cake marbleized with chocolate under vanilla buttercream with hardened  royal icing waves. Simple yet sophisticated flavor and a sturdy texture that holds up in layers and molds make this cake my go-to foundation for most occasions.

Preheat your oven to 350˚. Line a buttered pan with parchment paper then butter the whole thing thoroughly. Here, I used a heart shaped pan. Set oddly shaped pans on parchment paper and trace the bottom; cut just inside the outline for a customized liner.

In a prep bowl, sift together 1 ½ cups of cake flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, ¼ teaspoon of baking soda and some salt. If you are sifterless, whisk the dry ingredients to aerate. In a large bowl, beat 1 stick of softened butter and 1 cup of sugar. Crack in 2 eggs, beating each in until the batter is pale yellow and fluffy.

With a wooden spoon or rubber spatula, fold in ¾ sour cream or buttermilk, vanilla and the flour et al, alternating between the wet and dry until gently well mixed. Pour it in the pan, and drop that pan a few times on the table to spank the air bubbles to pop through the top. To marbleize, which was a new twist for this cake’s audience, dip a rubber spatula in warm chocolate ganache and dredge it in swirls through the batter.

Bake for about half an hour, evaluating progress at 20 minutes. Depending on your oven and the pan in use, baking times will vary. Done when golden brown and kinda bouncy. Let cool on a rack then run a knife between the cake and the pan edge and turn it out.

Cakes should be completely cool before you ice them. And a crumb coat makes all the difference to a fancy finish. Like the one here, of which I am so pleased.

I left the sail to their making. To be the traditional red and white stripes, I am told. Plus Viking figurines!

 

ps…viola, the final cake:

with vikings!

 

fondant is fabulous

i love everybody especially you

the purpose of the trip to the bakery store was edible glitter to bring along to faerie land for a future cake. however,

the velvety allure of pure white fondant demanded of me an immediate cake.

so a buttermilk cake was made- a reliable base of solid butter cake to uphold the white dream coat. also a stand-up foil for the lemon curd filling. because lemon curd is wicked good and far simpler than the glorious schmear makes itself out to be. the farmers market gave us teeny strawberries too, so halved those to lay within the filling.

made enough batter for one heart shaped layer.

once cooled, split it horizontally to be filled, which is french styled according to Julia Child.

to ensure the fondant lays as smoothly as possible, first thinly ice the cake with buttercream frosting, lemon buttercream, for a crumb coat.

the fondant came in a white block, like shortening or porcelain. and you wedge it just like clay. working it against the counter top against the palms of your hands until it is warmed and smoothed and ready for the rolling pin. slice off a wedge to roll to cover the cake; remainder can be rolled and cut freehand or with cookie cutters.

roll out the fondant into a circle, working from the center out and turning turning and flipping the icing. when expanded beyond the edges of your cake with enough extra to drape down the sides, gently lift it with the rolling pin and drape it over your cake. gently press the draping into place then burnish the top and sides by hand until it all softly glows.

spent hours piping royal icing decorations that harden like sugar plaster and keep presumably eternally.  although joy only had directions for microwaving the royal icing (!!!!), the egg whites can be whisked in a glass bowl over a simmering pot of water steam punk style until warmed thoroughly. add powdered sugar and a dash of clear vanilla extract and beat until stiff stiff stiff.  spatula into a pastry bag- readied with coupler- standing point down in a glass with the bag edges folded over the rim.

pipe shapes to heart’s content. for these, i colored some of the icing green and blue and added it into a bag with white. after drying them out on parchment paper and oh so delicately releasing them, i dusted them with silver dust. then rubbed silver dust on the fondant too.

delicious, yes. yet and still the pretty of it was profoundly satisfying.

winter farmshare yields carrot cake

according to recent text messages, this is the best carrot cake EVER!!!

the sweet up-shot of a zillion carrots from the winter farm share.

presuming carrot cake a quintessential American dessert, I went to Joy for the measurements. Out of respect for its crumbling, moldered pages, the 1953 edition doesn’t do kitchen duty so the kitchen’s 1997 edition provided the basic infrastructure. As expected, carrot cake, page 935. Adopted as below; brilliant.

snuggled into bed with the booky stink of the old copy to see how the recipe changed over time. It ain’t in there. Scoured the index, staring blankly at places where it should fit…carrot, cake; cake, carrot… It wasn’t hiding out near the gingerbread where it lives in 1997, and the gingerbread lived in breads not cake and without the quaint introduction as the baked good with the oldest traceable roots with the exception of bread. Wouldn’t carrot cake be a logical runner up? Pineapple cake—perhaps leading to the crushed pineapple in the late innovation of carrot cake—was the closest thing. Seems Granny Rom didn’t put shredded veggies in dessert.

and I don’t put canned crushed pineapple in anything. So, happily abandoning that convention, peel an apple, slice it into quarters, and drop them into a small saucepan with 4 tablespoons of butter, the zest of one lemon and half an orange, and about an inch of fresh ginger peeled and minced. Cook covered over low heat, stirring once in awhile, until, essentially, you have a very fragrant apple mush.

heat your oven to 350° and butter and flour a 9” round cake pan.

sift together: 1 ¾ cup of cake flour with 1 ½ teaspoons of baking soda and a teaspoon of baking powder with cloves, cinnamon, salt and freshly grated nutmeg.  I am afraid the latter measurements are of the “as you like” variety.

in a large measuring bowl, whisk together ½ cup of sunflower oil, 3 eggs (at room temperature), and one cup of sugar. We went in for plain white sugar which left room for the intricate spicing to shine through. Stir in the cooled apples.

stir in the dry goods along with 1 cup each of walnuts and dried cranberries as well as 2 cups of shredded carrots. Admittedly, the peeling & shredding of so many roots out me off making carrot cake before. The sole available tool had been a finger threatening flimsy box grater. But the newly gifted mandolin shredded them so fine and so fast we had more than originally called for lickety-split. Thus—even more carroty carrot cake.

pour the lot into your cake pan and bake for about half an hour or until set in the center. Leave for 10 minutes before turning out of the pan to a rack for cooling then a plate for icing.

by the work of our hands

according to my mother, who shredded these carrots and made the spangled pocket in the photo, carrot cake’s ultimate role is as perfect accompaniment for cream cheese frosting. The key to which, apparently, is very cold cream cheese. Cream together an 8 oz block of cold cream cheese with 4 tablespoons of softened butter and 2 – 2 ½ cups of powdered sugar.

once iced, the whole cake will need to refrigerated as well as slices as they linger, if the linger. Happy if they do, this is the sort of cake that gets better when its been around a bit.