Carrot Cake

Our puppy loves to dig and decided to take it upon himself to harvest our backyard carrots. To rid him of this naughty behavior I had no choice but to harvest them all at once. My husband and I can only eat so many carrots at dinner, and I didn't want them to go to waste, so I decided to make carrot cake. For some reason I've always been a bit intimated by it but I really needed to use those carrots! I found a recipe online, and in the process made a few tweaks. I was really happy in how it turned out. Very moist, and not too sweet. We ate it over a week and the moisture endured.

CARROT CAKE

18 Servings

Cake

4 eggs

3/4 cup of canola oil

1/2 cup of apple sauce

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup brown sugar

3 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups of all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg

3 teaspoons ground cinnamon

3 cups of grated carrots

1 8oz can of crushed pineapple (remove excess juice)

1/2 cup of chopped pecans

Frosting

1/2 cup softened butter

8 oz softened cream cheese

2 cups confectioners sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9x13 inch pan.

2. In a large bowl beat together eggs, oil, apple sauce, sugar and vanilla. Mix in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon. Stir in carrots and pineapple. Fold in pecans and pour into prepared pan.

3. Bake for 40-50 minutes. Let cool in pan for at least 10 minutes.

4. To make frosting, in a medium bowl combine butter, cream cheese, confectioner's sugar and vanilla. Beat until the mixture is smooth and creamy.

May Free for All - Blondies

I made some blondies this month and a few cakes, but decided to post about the blondies. You can read the whole post on the Lovely Lady Baker blog.

Dilly Casserole Bread

I know that I keep saying this, but "better late than never"..........
and so as we are halfway through May, I have finally got to make one of the March recipes - Dilly Casserole Bread.

I admit that I didn't know what to expect, having never heard the term 'casserole bread' before. Only know, do I understand that it is designed to not require kneading - which in my mind defeats one of the purposes of making bread: I love to knead!

And so I made it.

I confess that I wasn't that impressed - the taste was OK but not remarkable, the texture a bit too cakey (it was almost like savoury panettone!). I'm not sure that I will be making it again!

Plus, it got very brown very quickly - normally my oven is a bit slow, but not with this recipe!

My partner wasn't that impressed either! Maybe I will get a chance to try to Maple Oat bread recipe - I think that I'll enjoy that one more!

you NEED to make these cupcakes

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes. Did that get your attention? They are 100% deeeeelish. Check out the recipe and stories on my blog!

The Strawberry Clafoutis

So, I'm obviously very late in posting, but I figured better late than never- especially since I posted the recipes. I had tried these tasty treats while living in France, but never attempted to make my own, so it seemed like a worthwhile goal. I have a French dessert cookbook that I had bought while over there but had also never tried, so I enlisted Christina's help and between the two of us we got the Clafoutis recipe translated. There were several lessons learned- the almonds weren't ground fine enough (no food processor) and some of the batter oozed out of the bottom of the tart pan I used (it was closest in size to what I needed...), but it still turned out pretty well. Another try and it might taste pretty close to what I remember.

May Recipe: Anything You Desire!

For the month of May, bake and share the recipe of anything you wish. Dig out that stash of recipes you tear from magazines every month and finally make something from it, or bake your favorite snack, cookie, pastry, or savory snack. There is no limit to what you can do this month. (we'll resume next month with a member choosing the recipe).

Make sure you share the recipe and provide adequate credit by listing the cookbook, or website you found the recipe on. It is also good practice to provide a link to buy the cookbook online. If you need any help with this let me know!

Have fun, and remember to post during the last week of the month.
The Lovely Lady Baker

I made the clafoutis!

And the lemon bars and the croissants and I'm just now catching up to posting.

Head on over to my blog to read about my attempt at April's dessert.

Almost too late: Strawberry Clafoutis in very early May!

I thought that I wasn't going to get a chance to do any baking this month, but at last I got to make the Clafoutis as posted by Rebecca for April, even if it is very early May!

I was keen to try this recipe, as I have a very successful clafoutis recipe that I have used in the past, and I wanted to compare them. Anyway, more about how and why it happened today:

It was a glorious autumn day today in Sydney, still warm enough for shorts and a t-shirt as we went to North Bondi for a walk along the cliffs and beach. And because it was such a glorious day, I decided that we had to have an extra special dinner. And as it happened, I had almost everything needed for the clafoutis at home, except the blanched almonds which are ground up anyway, so I just used some almond meal,,,,,,,,

Anyway, I made half the mix, as there are only 2 of us in the house, and if I had made it all, we were likely to eat it all in one sitting! And I used some small overware dishes, to make 3 individual dishes.

As it isn't strawberry season in Australia, the ones I bought were not fantastic and I had to toss a few out, so I supplemented the strawbs in the oval dish with a few mixed frozen berries.

The clafoutis looked amazing when it first came out of the oven, all puffed up!

I confess I was a bit disappointed by what they looked like after they had been sitting on the bench for about 30 minutes, cooling. They were somewhat deflated and so was I!

But I persisted, and sprinkled them with icing sugar, and served them up. (They still did look good, as the custard has slightly shrunk away from the strawberries, leaving a wonderful textured surface.)

And, what was it like?

The flavour was lovely - I think that strawberries are better for this than the cherries I normally use.

The texture was great - using ground almonds in the custard gives it a firmer, less rubbery texture, plus a nice nutty taste too.

And what did we think overall:

The Clafouti recipe was a huge success. I'll definitely make this one again. And my partner won't complain - he loved it too!

The Lovely Lady Baker - French Desserts

I ended up making both desserts! Check out my post at The Lovely Lady Baker. Thanks Rebecca for choosing some great desserts for the month. Can't wait to see everyone's tarts/clafoutis.