My Dad’s favorite cake is carrot cake, which is easy enough. Last year for his birthday, I decided to change it up a little bit though, and made him a Rum Carrot cake. We had his birthday dinner at the restaurant that Stephen worked at at the time, and they graciously stored my cake for me. For some reason, they decided not to refrigerate my cake, so the icing melted and when the brought it out, the layers were sliding off of each other. Didn’t bother us though, we ate it in record time anyway.
I never saved the recipe, so all year, all we could do was think about how amazing the cake was and how much we wished we could have it again. My Dad’s birthday was back in April, so I decided to surprise him by finding the recipe again. I spent ages going through the archives of bakebakebake (a livejournal community that is oh so amazing and inspiring). I found the recipe, but because of circumstances that kept popping up (oh hi, I’m broke yet again), I didn’t get around to baking the cake until a couple of weeks ago. That’s ok, this cake was worth the wait.
This is the time in which I confess something to you dear readers; I cannot ice a cake to save my life. No matter how hard I try, I can’t get it to look beautiful. My family is always telling me to stop being a perfectionist and just be proud of what I do, so I’m going to post pictures of my cake, in all of it’s shabbily iced glory!
(I’m now accepting applications for a live in cake decorator. Will pay you in baked goods. You’ll be competing with Miranda, who already applied via Twitter.)
Rum Carrot Cake
(Barely) Adapted from kamihane (recipe here)
6 cups grated carrots
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup golden raisins
Rum
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup apple sauce
3 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
4 tsp cinnamon
1 cup chopped walnuts (I didn’t add this)
A note on rum: Last year, I used Captain Morgan and loved it. This year, I used Bacardi and while it was still fantastic, I recommend Captain Morgan if your liquor store has it.
1. Grate carrots. Mix with brown sugar and let sit for an hour. Put raisins in a bowl, fill with enough rum to cover raisins. Let sit for an hour. (After the hour, drain the rum)
2. Preheat oven to 350F and grease two 8” cake pans.
3. Combine raisins and carrot mixture. Drain excess liquid.
4. Beat eggs until lighter in color. Gradually mix in sugar, oil and vanilla. Mix in applesauce.
5. Whisk together dry ingredients. Fold into wet ingredients. Fold in walnuts if using.
6. Bake for 40-45 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
After the cake has cooled, level the bottom layer. You’ll end up with a bowl of scraps.
I started off with a crumb coat, but ran out of time to let it set. Oops. Proceed to ice your cake with your favorite Cream Cheese icing. I used a Cream Cheese Buttercream.
Look at those mad skills!
In order to distract my family from the mess, I added a heart to the top of the cake. I lightly placed a heart shaped cookie cutter at the top, filled with with red sanding sugar and then removed the cookie cutter.
I’m already dreaming of the next time that I get to make this cake…
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