Objects in the kitchen do not look like the picture - Carrot Cake disaster #1

Sunday, June 10, 2007


I wanted to make a carrot cake today for a colleague visiting our office tomorrow. I studied the Baking Illustrated recipe (page 337). I compared it to Alton Brown's recipe and thought Cook's might be easier...perhaps mistake #1...

This recipe calls for a lot of food processor usage. You shred the carrot with the food processor and then create a cool emulsified wet mixture to fold into the dry. I added lots of yummy spices: cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves! Yum!

I pulse (food processor verb), mix and pour. I wait 35 minutes. Then another 2 hours for the damn cake to cool. But I noticed right away that my cake was 10 times paler than the book's photo. Ugh...I'm hearing Mr. Trashcan creeping up on me.

I tried the cake that night and it was pretty bland and still very, very pale.... Yes, this bunny food ended up in Mr. Trashcan. Next time, I'm going to try Alton Brown's recipe.

I've gone to the 641.8 section of the library and pulled a bunch of books. I've been falling asleep reading "cream ingredients together" instead of anything on the bestseller list. We'll see if I can get a carrot cake together sometime this decade!
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2 comments:

Anonymous said... [Reply to comment]

This looks WAY too healthy for me. Ms. Sweet Tooth McCabe

Jenna said... [Reply to comment]

I know this is an old post (I got here through your picture of Marie-Helene's apple cake on Flickr), but this is the recipe I used for carrot cake: http://www.bhg.com/recipe/cakes/buttermilk-carrot-cake/
It was fabulous and finally broke me out of my "no mix cakes EVER (except for carrot cake because it's so much work)" funk. It is a lot of work, but it's so worth it. I got it out of this cookbook http://www.amazon.com/Baking-Better-Homes-Gardens-Books/dp/0696207990 but the recipe on the BHG site is the same.

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