I love this cake.  I mean, let’s be honest, I love cake in general, but this is my go-to cake for events.  Cary and I have been a part of 3 small groups (Bible studies that meet in people’s homes once a week).  In small group, each couple picks a night and brings dinner for the group.  The first dessert I bring is always this carrot cake.  The recipe is easy, tasty, and almost foolproof.

It’s funny though, whenever I show up and say that carrot cake is the dessert, everyone grimaces a little bit.  They try it, because they want to be polite, and then they exclaim that hey, this isn’t so bad…  It’s pretty good.  I’ve seen it happen three times.  Makes me giggle quietly to myself each time it happens.

The cake is an adaptation of Pioneer Women’s Carrot Cake.

The ingredients are

• 2 cups of Sugar
• 1 cup of Vegetable Oil
• 4 whole Eggs
• 1 teaspoon of Vanilla Extract
• 2 cups of All-purpose Flour
• 1/2 teaspoon of Salt
• 1 teaspoon of Baking Soda
• 1 teaspoon of Baking Powder
• 1 teaspoon of Ground Cinnamon
• 2 cups of Grated Carrots (grating the carrots takes the most time)

Preheat the oven to 350°.  Spray a 9 x 13 pan with non stick cooking spray.

Mix the sugar, oil, vanilla extract, and eggs in a large bowl.  In another bowl, mix the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon together.  Combine the two mixtures.  Add the carrots and mix well.

Bake for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted in the middle of the cake.

For the frosting, I use the Mascarpone Cream Cheese Frosting from Vintage Cakes that I also use on my red velvet cake.  I sprinkled the top with pecans, but that is totally optional.

I also love making this cake at Easter. 

My absolute favorite cake in the whole world is red velvet cake.  Growing up, my mom made red velvet cake as Jesus’ Birthday Cake at Christmas.  She talked about how the red color symbolized the blood He shed for us and the white symbolized that our sins were washed away.  I can’t help but think of that symbolism every time I make this cake.

I also know a lot of people like to make red velvet cake around Valentine’s Day because it’s just so gosh darn pretty.  So, if you are that person, ignore the Christmas sprinkles in the last picture.

Anywho…  back to our regularly scheduled programming…

When I was looking through Vintage Cakes, I was really interested in their red velvet recipe.  I wanted to see how it stacked up against my mom’s recipe.

The Vintage Cakes recipe calls for

• 2 and 1/2 cups sifted cake flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch-processed cocoa
• 2 teaspoons of baking powder
• 1 teaspoon of sea salt
• 3/4 cup of canola oil
• 2 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon of red food coloring
• 3/4 cup of unsalted butter
• 1 and 3/4 cup of sugar
• 4 eggs, at room temperature
• 2 egg yolks, at room temperature
• 1 cup of buttermilk, at room temperature

Preheat the over to 350º.  Spray a 9 x 13 dish with nonstick cooking spray. Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt together.  I don’t normally sift anything, but I sift this recipe.   If this is not sifted, you get big clumps of cocoa in your cake.  Bleck.

Combine the oil, vanilla and food coloring in another bowl.  In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar together (about 5 minutes).  At a low speed, add the oil mixture to the batter.  Slowly increase the speed to medium, mixing until the batter is fluffy again. Blend in the egg and egg yolks one at a time.

With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture in three parts, alternating with buttermilk in two parts.  You should begin and end with flour.  Mix until the flour is incorporated.

Pour the batter into the greased cake pan and bake for approximately 30 minutes.  Let the cake cool completely before icing.

Speaking of icing….  The frosting I used was a Mascarpone Cream Cheese Frosting from Vintage Cakes.  Here are the ingredients.

Marscarpone Cream Cheese Frosting

• 8 oz of cream cheese, at room temperature
• 8 oz of mascarpone, cold
• 1/2 cup of heavy cream, cold
• 1/3 cup of sugar
• 1 tablespoon of pure vanilla extract

Using the stand mixer with the paddle attachment, beat the cream cheese until it is uniform in texture.  Add the mascarpone, cream, and the sugar.  Beat on low speed until combined.  Gently ramp up to high speed and blend the frosting for one minute.  It should look creamy and thick.  Turn back down to low speed, add the vanilla, and gently mix until it is blended.  Frost away…  (P.S.  The book says it keeps in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.  Normally our cake doesn’t last that long.)

My mom’s recipe calls for

• 3 cups plain flour (sift before measuring)
• 3 tablespoons of Dutch-processed cocoa
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 cup Wesson oil
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 teaspoon vinegar
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• 1 large bottle (1 oz.) of red food coloring
•  2 eggs, slightly beaten

Preheat oven to 350º.   Spray a 9 x 13 dish with nonstick cooking spray.   Sift dry ingredients together (seriously…  if you don’t sift, then the cocoa stays clumped together and it is not good).  Add the sugar to the flour and mix.  Add the liquids in the order listed above, mixing well after each addition.

Bake at 350 degrees about 40 minutes or until cake pulls away from sides of pans.

My mom uses a traditional cream cheese frosting that I’ve never really liked.  It’s nothing specific, I just don’t like really any cream cheese frosting.  I love the Mascarpone Cream Cheese Frosting from Vintage Cakes.

Now, the Vintage Cake’s red velvet is very dense, with a finer crumb and more of a chocolate flavor.  It also tasted a little dry.  My mom’s cake is more moist, with a bit larger crumb and a lighter chocolate flavor.  Plus, it’s a little easier to make.  I like my mom’s cake better.

So, to recap, the perfect Red Velvet cake is my mom’s cake recipe and Vintage Cake’s Mascarpone Cream Cheese frosting recipe.  Yum.

*Note:  If a lot of food coloring gives you the heebie-jeebies, don’t add it.  You’ll just have a light chocolate cake.  Whole Foods also has natural food colorings too.  They tend to be a little duller, but they still should work in theory.

**Note 2:  If you want another color, say green for St. Patrick’s Day, substitute green food coloring for the red.

Around the holidays, I like to make candied pecans.  I give them away to neighbors, put them on salads, or just eat them as a snack.   This is my mom’s recipe that she tinkered with until she could find the right mix of spices that weren’t terribly overpowering and a temperature that wouldn’t burn the pecans.

For the pecans, you’ll need:

• 1/2 c. sugar
• 1/2 t. cinnamon
• 1/4 t. cloves
• 1/4 t. nutmeg
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 2 T. melted butter
• 1 egg white, beaten stiff
• 1 t. water
• 2 1/2 c. pecans

Preheat oven to 225 degrees.

Mix the melted butter, egg whites and water until it begins to get a little foamy.  Add pecans to the egg white and butter mixture.  In a separate bowl, mix the sugar, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt.  Add the spice mixture to the pecans.  Stir thoroughly until each pecan is coated with the spice.  Place on a pan sprayed with nonstick cooking spray.  Bake at 225 for 1 hour.

When my mom packed me up for college, she typed all her recipes on the computer and put them in category folders for me (she is awesome).  If I was ever homesick, I could make one of her recipes and it would cheer me right up.  As I’ve gotten older, I love to go back and make the recipes that I grew up with for my family.  My favorite holiday recipe that I inherited from my mom is her gingersnaps.

For the cookies, you’ll need:

• 1 cup sugar
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 t. salt
• 1 t. soda
• 1 t. cinnamon
• 1 t. ginger
• 1/2 t. ground cloves
• 3/4 cups shortening
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 1 egg, slightly beaten
• extra sugar, placed in a small bowl

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix together the dry ingredients.  Cut the shortening into the dry ingredients until it looks about like grains of rice.  Stir in molasses and egg (dough will be stiff).

Form 1″ balls of dough and roll  the balls in the extra sugar.

Place on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 8 – 10 minutes at 350 degrees.  DO NOT OVERBAKE! (These are her exact typed words.)

Remove cookies immediately from baking sheet and place on a wire rack to cool.

My Mom’s birthday is this month and I decided to make a birthday cake for her when they visited this weekend.  Her favorite cake is what I would consider the traditional birthday cake, yellow cake with chocolate icing.  I’ve never made one of these from scratch, but a recipe caught my eye when I was perusing Vintage Cakes by Julie Richardson.  Vintage Cakes is a great cookbook.  Richardson tells a story behind each recipe and she has updated the ingredients as well as several of the techniques to make the recipes a little more user friendly.

In the chapter called Party Cakes, there is a recipe for “The Classic”, which is what I was looking for.  For this cake, you’ll need the following:

• 1 and 1/3 cups of sifted cake flour
• 3/4 cup plus 2 Tablespoons of all-purpose flour
• 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 6 Tablespoons of room temperature unsalted butter
• 2 cups of sugar
• 1/2 cup of canola oil
• 1 tablespoon of pure vanilla extract
• 4 egg yolks at room temperature
• 3 eggs at room temperature
• 1/2 cup of buttermilk at room temperature
• 1/2 cups of heavy cream, cold

For the Fudge Frosting, you’ll need:

• 1 pound of semisweet chocolate, chopped or chips
• 2 cups of heavy cream
• 1/2 cup of firmly packed dark brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

It takes about two hours for the frosting to reach the consistency that is needed, so I started it before the cake.

For the frosting, place the chocolate is a largish, heat resistant bowl.  Combine the cream, vanilla extract and brown sugar in a saucepan over medium heat on the stove.  Heat until the cream is simmering.  Then pour the liquid over the chocolate.  Stir just enough to confirm that the chocolate is coated with the liquid.  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit for 5 minutes.  Then whisk the mixture until you have a smooth consistency.  Sit the icing bowl on the counter and stir every 10 minutes or so.  Use when it is cool.

Now, start on the cake.   In the book, Richardson tells you to whip the cream by hand in a cold bowl and then put it back in the refrigerator until you need it.  I have a stand mixture and hate whipping cream by hand, so I threw it in the stand mixture until there were soft peaks.  Then I put the cream in a bowl and put it in the refrigerator until I needed it.

I cleaned out my stand mixture bowl and creamed the butter and sugar using the paddle attachment.  Once it was light and fluffy (after about 5 minutes), I added the oil and vanilla and mixed until they were incorporated.  Then, I added the egg yolks and eggs one by one, while mixing.  While mixing on low speed, the flour was added in three parts, alternating with the buttermilk.  After the last addition of flour, I used a spatula to blend by hand and folded in the cream.

In her book, Richardson used two 8 or 9 inch round pan and baked the cake for 35 to 40 minutes at 350°F.  I used a 9 x 13 pan and baked the cake at 350°F for 45 minutes.  The top of the cake was browning more than I liked, so I dropped the temperature to 325°F for about 5 to 7 additional minutes.  Let the cake cool and ice using the fudge frosting.

I’m never buying cake mix for this again.  I really loved the taste and texture of the cake.  I like the texture of the icing, but I wasn’t wild about the taste of the chocolate.  That is totally my fault.  I used Toll House chocolate and I think I just need to use a different chocolate.

Disclaimer:  Richardson doesn’t know who I am.  I just bought the book and liked it.