Making Cakes

I love making cakes. I love measuring out the ingredients, sifting the flour so it’s perfectly powdery and light, creaming butter and sugar together (and eating a little of it before adding the eggs), even straining the seeds out of homemade raspberry sauce at midnight to make the perfect filling for a birthday cake. Measuring the ingredients, pouring them into a bowl and mixing them together becomes a methodical sugar-and-flour-meditation, ending in wafting aromas of cinnamon and sugar.

I remember making cakes, cookies and breads with my mom. She would let us measure out all of the ingredients, sometimes let us pour them into the silver mixing bowl and we would always get to push the lever into the start position, inevitably creating a cloud of flour dust because we’d chosen too high of a speed.

No matter what’s going on around you, what’s happening (or not happening) in your life, when you bake you get to make it the way you want it - a perfect escape from real life. Two bags of chocolate chips instead of one, sure! A sprinkling of pink sugar on top of your frosted double fudge cupcake, of course!! A peanut buttery filling inside your birthday brownies, yes please! Baking is a deliciously edible piece of personalized and, unfortunately, temporary art.

But the best part about making cakes is using my circa 1980 cream colored KitchenAid mixer. My mother gave it to me seeking more counter space in her kitchen. It’s bulky and heavier than a stack of bricks, the silver band that carries the brand around the top of the mixer is slightly rusted and it rocks back and forth when you mix sticky dough at high speed. But it’s basically a family heirloom and it will run forever. I always look through the Macy’s Home Store flyers and get excited when KitchenAid mixers are on sale and imagine picking out a shiny new brightly colored one with all the attachments, but I could never replace this one. Maybe if it starts smoking and sputtering when it mixes or simply doesn’t turn on…but I’m sure there’s a special KitchenAid mixer repair shop somewhere.

I recently made a carrot cake. I like carrot cake better homemade because then you don’t bit into a mouthwatering piece of cinnamon goodness to find raisins or worse, pineapples, dotting the cake. AND you can smother it in inches of thick homemade cream cheese frosting (the recipe said to do it that way!). And the very best part of making it at home is waking up the next morning and eating a big slab of it for breakfast justifying your choice in breakfast foods by noting the four cups of carrots that went into the batter. That’s way more than your daily vegetable requirement (and probably more than your butter and sugar allotment for 3 weeks).

Carrot Cake

Ingredients:

4 eggs

1 ¼ cups vegetable oil

2 cups white sugar

3 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsps baking soda

2 tsps baking powder

½ tsp salt

2 tsps ground cinnamon

4 cups grated carrots

1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two 9-inch round cake pans.

In a large bowl beat together eggs oils, white sugar and 3 teaspoons vanilla. Mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon in a separate bowl and combine with wet ingredients. Stir in by hand the carrots and pecans. Pour into the prepared pan.

Bake for about 30 minutes or until a fork comes out clean from the center of the cake. Let it cool in the pan for 10 minutes, and then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely before frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

2 (8 ounce) packages of cream cheese softened (I just leave it out of the fridge for an hour)

½ cup (1 stick) of butter, softened (I do the same as above)

5 cups powdered sugar

2 tsps vanilla

Beat cream cheese and butter in a large bowl at medium speed with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. 

Gradually add sugar; beat at low speed until creamy. Stir in vanilla.

*The best part of this frosting recipe is there is about ¾ cup of it left after frosting the cake to dip your finger into every time you open the fridge!! YUM!

Worst picture I've taken to date! I really need to work on my food photography...or maybe upgrade to a non-iPhone camera!