So, try to bake what was essentially enough cake to stock a small Woolies (An upmarket South African convenience store), in your home oven in just a few days, and you're bound to make a booboo somewhere 🤣
I thought I was clever, and baked all the bases I could on the Sunday, in preparation for both my Boss's birthday and @ZakLudick's 2 Birthday Braai Parties (so that's carrot cake, chocolate cake and cheesecake and chocolate cupcakes).
My carrot cake is always such a winner, because it makes such a massive amount, I can make up to 36 cupcakes at a time (normal cake batter usually yeilds 24) a freaking massive coffee shop sized cake or 2-4 cake loaves, depending on the size of the tins.
I decided, for Zak's 1st party and my boss's birthday, I'd bake two enormous cake loaves on the Sunday, and I'd decorate them the following evening so they'd both be ready for Tuesday.
Of course, if you've read my post Mommy's Mental Health - Chapter 9: My Octopus Teacher, Load shedding and Disappearing Daughters, you'll know that these things never go according to plan. With 3 preeteen/ actual teen kids and loadshedding (South Africa's exclusive passport to rolling electrical blackouts), it's always an "exciting juggle" sarcasm to get anything baked on time, or to arrive for any event whatsoever on time... ever.
Anyway, so I stole some nasturtiums (Edible orange flowers) from my mom's garden, and armed with the shopping and baking I'd already done on Sunday, my homemade and premade icing and exorbitant collection of nuts and sprinkles, I figured I'd have this nailed in under an hour.
HAHAHAHAHAhahahahaha.....ahahahahaha...aaaaaaaaaahhhhh
So at 11h30pm on Monday evening, completely covered in cream cheese icing and food colouring and at least half way through a 3lt box of chocolate cabernet, I looked at my artistic creations and decided to call it a night.
The next morning, I tried to pick what I thought was the prettiest one for my boss, retrieved my stolen nasturtiums from their vase and plonked them on the cake before running out the door with the kids - trying to ensure no one plonked their schoolbags on my precious cake.
I ended up putting the cake on the passenger seat next to me, squashing all the kids in the back of the car. Yes, I almost put a seatbelt on it.
I arrived at work, beaming with pride that I managed to
a) make the cake on time
b) drive all the way to work without it slipping onto the car's floormat
c) made it up in the lift without tripping or dropping it on the hospital floor.
It was then, as I was showing my prized creation of to my colleagues that I had F#$%@#$ up. Oh Lhort.
Spot the booboo.....
Ya, so, this is why you guys hired me. Right? For my excellent command of the English language right?
hApPy bIrTdAy
BIRTDAY
birtday
.....And this, after ripping off my son @Matthew-Williams for misspelling birthday on @ZakLudick's card a few days back. Karma, was very very fast.
SO I had roughly 30 minutes before my boss was about to arrive, and she's certainly not one for knocking on doors, so I knew she could arrive at my desk unannounced, any minute. Armed with a fork and a wooden take away spoon, I managed to transplant the sprinkle nuts and decorative stars, as well as smooth out all the icing so that the cake finally spelled out Happy Birthday - which I accomplished 5 minutes after she arrived, thanks to my colleague distracting her in the waiting room!
TAADAA!!!!
For my beloved carrot cake recipe, adapted for loaves keep on reading:
You will need:
Electric mixer
A large mixing bowl
A chopping board
A knife for chopping
A grater
A wooden Spoon
Baking Paper/ cupcake holders
Spray and Cook
Scissors
Baking tins: two to three loaf tins (I used two big ones for this. Each cake weighed approximately 1kg)/
Method
Preheat the oven to 180deg celcius and get busy prepping your loaf baking trays. You will need to spray them very thoroughly as this is an extremely high sugar content cake and it WILL stick if you don't. DO NOT use butter or oil or margarine. These will just leave you eating the carrot cake out of the tin (which I have totally done). You then need to line the tins with baking paper, that you will need to cut out to fit the inside and sides of your tins. Once your lining is in place, give everything another good spray, just incase.
Cake Ingredients:
Cake Flour: x 2 cups
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons of baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons of bicarb
2 cups of sugar
1 1/2 cups of oil (sunflower works great)
4 eggs lightly beaten
2 cups of carrots (grated)
1 tin crushed pineapple (lightly drained)
1 pack of sprinkling nuts or 100g wallnuts or pecan nuts, crushed. You will use half in the batter and save half to decorate later.
1 cup desiccated coconut
Method
This recipe is so easy you can literally throw everything into a large mixing bowl and stir with your wooden spoon. You don't need an electric beater. You will need to work those arm muscles though to make sure everything combines. Once well mixed, you can spoon the mixture into your baking trays.
Baking time for Loaves: approximately 45 minutes
Be sure to place your trays as centered as possible in the oven and not too close to the bottom or top. The high sugar content will also cause it to burn easily.
Once your baking time is up, remove from the oven and check to see if your loaves are is done by gently sliding a skewer into their centres. If it comes out clean, its done. If there is batter stuck to the skewer, it must go back in.
When your loaves are done place them on a cooling rack for at least an hour before flipping them over and out - gently - onto another cooling rack.
While you wait for these to cool off enough to ice, you can prepare the icing. Remember to never ice warm cake. It will melt and ruin your icing.
Icing Ingredients:
200g butter
400g icing sugar
250g cream cheese
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Method:
Once again, you can just throw these all into a mixing bowl all together and mix! This time you'll need that electric mixer to get the light and fluffy texture you need.
When you are ready, you can spoon or pipe the icing onto your loaves and then sprinkle with nuts for decoration. On this occasion, I also used nasturtiums (edible flowers) and star shaped cake sprinkles.
These loaves have an absolutely exceptional shelf life and are fantastic gifts (as an alternative to traditional Christmas cake or as birthday cakes) or even for keeping at home to munch on yourself. I have made one for my colleague who helped me with the distraction, as mentioned above, and she told me that she has even put my cake into the freezer, pre sliced, and she literally just removes a slice a few hours ahead of time, lets it defrost at room temperature, and its divine just like that! How's that for awesome!