HCB - double feature: Classic Carrot Cake and English Gingerbread Cake

Today's post consists two cakes from Rose's Heavenly Cakes book. The first one is the Classic Carrot Cake. It's very similar to my favorite carrot cake from America's Test Kitchen. They're both oil-based, with the same amount of carrots and sugar. The flour amount differs a bit. And Rose's recipe has an interesting ingredient: cocoa powder. This gave the carrot cake a beautiful dark color. A great backdrop for the shredded carrots. Instead of the white chocolate cream cheese frosting, I used my "standby" cream cheese frosting which I had in the freezer. Will have to try Rose's frosting recipe next time since everybody raved about it :o)


I made a few small changes to the recipe:

• Cut the recipe in half and reduced the oil to 1/2 cup (4 oz by weight). Baked the cake in a 8"x8" glass pan.
  
• Carrots and oranges are a match made in heaven, in my humble opinion. So I added 1/2 Tbsp of orange zest to the batter (zest of 1 orange).
• Accidentally used bleached all-purpose flour. Glad I did because it produced a finer crumb.
• For the most volume in the cake, beat the sugars, eggs and orange zest together until thick and pale colored. Slowly drizzle in the oil. This emulsifies the batter, the way it does when you're making a vinaigrette. Then add shredded carrots, followed by the addition of the dry ingredients in three steps.
  
• Grated white chocolate on top of the cream cheese frosting for decoration.
  

Everybody who tried it, loved it. Myself included. In the end, it was the addition of the orange zest that set this carrot cake apart from others.

This week's Heavenly Cake Baker recipe was the English Gingerbread Cake. I was very happy that the cake didn't have any molasses. That, and the overuse of ginger is usually what makes me not like gingerbread cakes. Not at all the case here so I was excited to try it. Especially since I need a dessert to take to work tomorrow for a potluck.

The cupcakes are baking away...

I made the following changes to the recipe:

• Since I didn't have orange marmalade, I used my friend's homemade spicy apple butter, and orange zest from 1/2 an orange.
• Used white whole wheat flour for the whole wheat flour in the recipe.
• Use two-thirds light corn syrup and one-third organic amber Agave Nectar from Mexico, so maybe I should call this Mexican Gingerbread Cake :o)
• Yielded 22 cupcakes, which baked for 19 minutes in my convection oven.

After liberally brushing the cupcakes with the syrup, I still had a bit left, so I added powdered sugar to it and made a quick icing to drizzle on top for decoration

My husband calls this "playing around". Let me tell ya... this is fun :o)

The lemon butter syrup was delicious and I'm glad I didn't skip it. It added a nice zing. These cupcakes were light, fluffy, tender, moist, and mildly spicy. Oddly enough, I thought it could use more ginger flavor. Next time, I will add finely chopped candied ginger to the batter.

An inside look. Isn't that beautiful?

SMS - Chocolate Espresso Cheesecake

This is a very late SMS post but better late than never, right? :o) Shandy of Pastry Heaven by Shandy picked the last SMS recipe of the year: Chocolate Espresso Cheesecake with Blackberry Glaze. This cheesecake was delicious. It's very chocolatey, creamy and rich, so thin slices will go a long way. To find out for yourself, check out the recipe HERE.

Out of the oven, cooled completely, and ready to be glazed

Used homemade grape jelly in place of the blackberry glaze

A thin slice of delicious cheesecake. Come to momma :o)

I will keep this post short and sweet. The shortcuts I took and other changes I made can be found below.

Final thoughts/tips:

• Replaced the rum in the recipe with heavy cream. For a silkier texture, I added 1 egg yolk.
  
• Instead of the chocolate cookie crust, I used my favorite gingersnap crust with ground almonds.
  
• Skipped pre-baking the crust and the thin layer of melted chocolate on top of the crust. The cheesecake itself is already chocolatey enough.
  
• Cut the amount of espresso in half since I'm not a coffee fan. Glad I did!
• Baked the cheesecake in a water bath in a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes. Afterwards, with the oven door closed, shut off the oven and left the cheesecake in the there for 1 hour.
• Instead of a blackberry glaze, I made a glaze from homemade grape jelly. The cheesecake was delicious without the glaze too.
  

Kitchen remodeling = completed

The kitchen remodeling project is finally over. During this process I kept reminding myself that it will be worth the wait, and it certainly was. I might have to change my blog's name to Hanaâ's New Kitchen :o)

Tada!

The cabinets are maple which I really like. The granite counter top is called Verde Jade and is a beautiful shade of green with some black, silver, and red. I took it upon myself to design the backsplash. The main goal was to have a nice pattern which completely avoided the (many) switch plates we have. The hardware for the doors and drawers are a satin nickel, from Home Depot.

Every contractor we worked with, did a great job, so I highly recommend all of them. If you live in Minnesota, make sure to check out these contractors:

• Custom cabinetry: Freeman's Custom Cabinets
• Granite counter top: Universal Stone Inc
• Wood flooring and tiled backsplash: B & R Hardwood and Tile

They say, a picture is worth a thousand words. So without further ado, here are before and after pictures of my kitchen.

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After...

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Volcano Birthday Cake

A quick note to my SMS friends: I will be baking and posting my Chocolate Espresso Cheesecake for Sweet Melissa Sundays later this week. I will be getting my new oven tomorrow and decided to "break in" the new oven with this cheesecake :o)

When my friend asked me to make a "science-themed" cake for his daughter's birthday, I had no idea what to make. While strolling on the Vegas strip with my husband, I was telling him about the cake. At that point, we were walking by the Mirage which has a big Volcano in its "front yard". Hubby then said, "how about a volcano cake?". What a great idea!

My friend is very creative and wanted to add some special effects to the cake. His plan was to use dry ice and water to create smoke, and a foam cup with a balloon filled with baking soda, with a small syringe taped to it, containing vinegar, covered in "lava" (red icing). So to accommodate all this, I decided to bake 2 Bundt cakes and stack them on top of one another.

The bottom cake is a Chocolate Velvet Fudge Cake from Rose's Heavenly Cakes. The top is is a Chocolate Butter Cake from CakeLove. Both cakes tasted great; moist, tender and very chocolatey. The volcano was covered with my original Chocolate Cream Cheese frosting (something I wanted to try out for a while). It was great; light, creamy, chocolatey, with a little tang at the end.

Here are some other pictures:

The batter is silky smooth. Too bad I don't eat raw batter. This smelled great.

One cake baked in a Bundt pan and the other in an Angel Food Cake pan

The two cakes stacked, with 3 straws inserted in the bottom cake and a alu foiled wrapped cardboard in between for support

After the carving was done. The first cut was the scariest of all :o) Now it's ready for frosting.

A big volcano and a mini volcano!