More Cheese More Chocolate: Happy Birthday to ME!

This year for my birthday I am focusing on baked goods. I have had a persistent cold for three weeks now, so going out and boozing is out of the question. To make up for all of the calories I would otherwise be wasting on champagne and tequila I am consuming various morsels, large and small, of anything baked. Although my birthday is today, I started early by baking a cornmeal yogurt cake on Friday (recipe coming soon). I kept the train running on Saturday with a giant cinnamon roll from French Meadow Bakery. When I say giant, I mean giant. It was the size of a small melon. To my credit, I ate a salad before indulging, and I spread the consumption out over the course of two days. On the other had, I had no help from Matt. I ate that whole puppy on my own. And it was totally worth it. I'm going to make my dad get one this weekend when my parents come to visit.

Here is the cinnamon roll shortly into day 1:

Come Sunday night I had not had any kind of baked good for about 8 hours, so I decided it was time to make cake. When I was growing up my mom would usually make either carrot cake or strawberry cake for my birthday, and they both sounded appealing. In the end carrot cake won out. I haven't been to the optometrist this year, so I thought the vitamin A from the carrots would be really beneficial. Cream cheese frosting was a huge factor in my decision, too.

My mom was kind enough to send me her recipe for carrot cake, which is posted below. I made a couple changes, which are noted at the end of the recipe.

Carrot Cake

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups shredded carrots

2 tsp. cinnamon

2 cups granulated sugar

2 tsp. baking soda

1 cup oil

2 tsp. baking powder

4 unbeaten eggs

1 tsp. salt

1 cup chopped pecans

Sift dry ingredients, except sugar, together. Mix sugar with oil in an electric mixer. Add dry ingredients alternately with the eggs to the sugar and oil, mixing after each addition. Add carrots and nuts. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour in a 9" tube pan with the bottom greased.

Icing

1/4 lb. butter

1 box confectioner's sugar

8 oz. Philadelphia cream cheese

2 tsp. vanilla extract

Allow butter and cheese to soften. Mix together and blend in the sugar. Add the vanilla.

(Note: This makes a very generous amount of icing. If you would prefer not to have a good half inch of it, cut the recipe down by a third. - as you may have guessed, knowing my theory that there is no such thing as too much icing, this note is part of the original recipe)

My changes:

- Add 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg and 1/2 tsp ground ginger to the dry ingredients.

- Use 2-1/2 cups carrots instead of 2 cups

- Use 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup pecans instead of 1 cup

Start out by shredding the carrots. I started with four fairly large carrots, and I ended up with a good 2-1/2 cups once they were shredded.

I used a food processor, and it worked like a charm. A cheese grater would work as well.

In case you were wondering what my shredded carrots looked like...

Now on to the dry ingredients. Combine the flour, spices, salt, baking powder, and baking soda.

Sift them all together.

Well done, sifter.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the oil and the sugar.

It kind of looks like a pina colada, no?

Alternate adding the eggs one at a time...

...and mixing well...

...and adding batches of the dry ingredients.

Here's the batter after all of the eggs and dry ingredients have been added.

Next up: chopping nuts. You want fairly small pieces. My cutting board really responds well to chopped pecans. See?

Add the pecans and shredded carrots to the batter.

Stir until combined.

Sometimes I do things without thinking. Ok, I frequently do things without thinking. Like starting to make cupcakes without checking to make sure I have cupcake liners. Turns out, cupcake liners are not totally necessary. They're certainly helpful, but cupcakes are still cupcakes without a little piece of paper stuck to them. I just buttered the pan a little, and I had some eco-friendly cupcakes.

Fill each about 2/3 full, and bake at 350 for 20 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean.

The amount of batter I had would have probably made two dozen cupcakes. I only have one cupcake pan and didn't feel like waiting around to bake a second batch, so I made a dozen cupcakes and one cake in a 9x5" pan. Just make sure you adjust the baking time for whatever pan you use.

Now on to the best part - cream cheese frosting.

Beat together a package of cream cheese and a stick of butter.

Add powdered sugar in batches. The recipe calls for a box, and I had a bag. C'est la vie. I just kept adding more and more until it was the consistency I wanted, and I ended up using most of the bag.

Once all of the powdered sugar is mixed in, add a couple teaspoons of vanilla.