Episode 35 – Carrot Cake

Episode 35
January 30, 2011
Carrot Cake

To be honest, I’ve never had a particular fondness for carrot cake.  I like carrots, and I love cake but when they are together it doesn’t really satisfy me the way that, say, a chocolate cake would.  Don’t get me wrong – carrot cake is delicious – but if I’m at a restaurant and I’m ready for dessert, I probably wouldn’t order the carrot cake.  That being said, there are plenty of people who love carrot cake, and I’m pretty sure this is a neat way of sneaking in another serving of vegetables to your picky eaters.

Remember back in the Pumpkin rolls post where I said I liked Libby’s cream cheese filling so much that I would use it for an icing?  Well, here it is!  It worked pretty well actually.  At first I was a little apprehensive because I thought it might be just a little too thick.  You may notice in the video my cake was sliding around a bit on the cake cardboard.  Would you believe it was because my cake was still a little too warm?  The cake itself felt fine to me, but a couple hours later when I was cutting a slice for myself after dinner I noticed the bottom of the cake container felt warm.  Then I noticed that the cake layers themselves still felt warm, which was pretty wild seeing as the cake had been sitting in the fridge.  Next time, I’m going to make doubly sure that the cake is completely cooled – icing a warm cake is just asking for trouble.  I’m lucky all I had to deal with was a cake that was sliding around.

Oh and be careful about your carrot decorations if you choose to make them.  Fondant is just sugar so it will melt in the presence of water like in the icing or condensation – creating a sugary pool of orange on your cake.  If you can, wait until the very last minute before serving to put them on top.  Marzipan decorations work well too and I think they are a little more water resistant, so you might want to use marzipan instead.  I just used fondant because it’s what I had on hand.

There really isn’t much else to say about this episode so here’s the carrot cake recipe (which includes the cream cheese icing recipe) and enjoy the video below!  Thanks for watching!