Super Moist Carrot Cake

Could it be that "retro" is making a comeback in the baking world? Maybe it's the influence of a recent delightful visit to The Tea Parlour for a friend's 21st (review soon to follow, hopefully!), but lately, I've been craving simple tea cakes, scones, and slices - basically, the stuff you find in a Australian Women's Weekly cookbook. And so it was in the spirit of "everything old is new again" that I made this delicious and super moist carrot cake.

The carrot cake and I go waaay back. In fact, it was the first cake that I baked from scratch, as the final assessment for a Design and Technology course in Year 8. I remember that class very clearly. In the weeks leading up to it, we'd been put through the paces in basic cookery with various old-school Aussie favourites: chocolate chip cookies, butterfly cakes, etc. For our assessment, we were given an hour and a half to complete a recipe of our choice, working in groups of threes. Come to think of it, it was kinda like a Masterchef team challenge!

Anyway, the carrot cake turned out fantastically, and the cream cheese frosting left so deep an impression on my naive palate that it remains my favourite type of frosting to this day. My fellow team members and I proudly presented a generous slice of cake to the lovely ladies down at reception. The rest we split between the three of us. As I recall, it was a GINORMOUS cake that we made, and my share lasted for days.

And so I have very fond memories of the carrot cake. This particular one wasn't frosted due to time constraints, but I imagine that the maple cream cheese frosting I made for my browned butter apple pound cake a while back would have been perfect for this. The recipe I used for this carrot cake utilised ghee instead of the usual vegetable oil. I do believe that either choice would be fine in the cake. I would describe the texture of this cake as extremely moist; almost pudding like. I was worried that it would be too sweet when I tasted the batter (raw eggs don't scare me! xD), but the baked cake was not very sweet at all. Which means that you can pile on the cream cheese frosting extra thick!

Recipe for a Super Moist Carrot Cake

Adapted from Guilty Kitchen

Recipe yields one 22cm x 12cm loaf AND 7 cupcakes, OR one 9-inch two-layer cake

Ingredients

2 cups cake flour
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated white sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp powdered ginger
1 tsp salt
4 eggs
1 cup ghee, melted
1/3 cup buttermilk (or 1/3 cup whole milk + 1 tsp apple cider vinegar)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
2 1/2 cups finely grated carrot (I used five carrots)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees Celsius (or 350 degrees Fahrenheit). Grease and flour a 22cm x 12cm loaf tin, or line it with aluminium foil. You can reserve leftover batter for another thinner loaf, or make cupcakes out of it.

2. In a bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, and baking powder. Stir in the brown sugar, white sugar, ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, powdered ginger and salt. Use the back of the spoon to break up any lumps formed by the brown sugar.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs into the melted ghee, one by one. Whisk in the buttermilk, vanilla extract and vanilla bean paste. Stir in the grated carrots.

4. Combine the dry and wet ingredients, and mix until incorporated and smooth. Be careful not to overmix.

5. Pour the batter into the loaf tin, filling it 3/4 full.

6. Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour, or until skewer inserted into centre of the loaf comes out clean. If the top of your cake gets too brown, cover the cake loosely with a piece of foil for the final 10 minutes of baking.

7. Once done baking, remove from oven and allow cake to cool in tin for 10 minutes. Remove from tin, and let cake finish cooling off on a cooling rack.

To make cupcakes:


1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees Celsius (or 350 degrees Fahrenheit).

2. Line muffin tray with cupcake liners.

3. Fill liners 3/4 full with batter.

4. Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes.

5. Allow cupcakes to cool in tray for 10 minutes, before attempting to move them onto cooling racks.

Braided Challah (Daring Bakers Challenge, May 2012)

Here's the brief for this challenge: "May's Daring Bakers' Challenge was pretty twisted - Ruth from The Crafts of Mommyhood challenged us to make challah! Using recipes from all over, and tips from "A Taste of Challah," by Tamar Ansh, she encouraged us to bake beautifully braided breads."

With free time being so scarce these days, I like to put 150% effort into the baking projects that I take on. This particular recipe held special significance for me because it was my first Daring Bakers Challenge. I was hesitant at first to join the Daring Bakers, because I knew for sure that I would not be able to dedicate much time to this blog this year because of a massive uni workload. However, seeing other bloggers proudly showing off their masterpieces on each month's reveal date filled me with such senses of envy and longing that I caved, and signed up at the end of April. And behold - I have completed my very first challenge - a raisin and cinnamon swirl challah!

The Challah is a braided loaf traditionally eaten on Sabbath and other Jewish holidays. The bread is made with a yeasted dough enriched with eggs, sugar and oil. Ruth from The Crafts of Mommyhood, who is our host for this challenge, provided us with various recipes for the dough (including her own "go-to" whole wheat version), as well as helpful tips on braiding the loaf. After a little bit of research, I settled on Maggie Glezer's Chernowitzer Challah recipe, after seeing it being used by Lisa for her 'Chocolate Cinnamon Raisin Swirl Challah'. If that description alone isn't enough to get you salivating...you must be made of stone.

Cinnamon rolls are one of my very favourite carby treats, and I can pretty much eat raisins as my daily servings of fruit for the rest of my life. And so I followed in Lisa's footsteps, and made my Challah a cinnamon and raisin swirl one, without the chocolate. I was worried that it might be too much of a good thing, and anyway, I live with a bunch of mutants who don't like chocolate. The swirl pattern didn't come out at all. I think it was because the filling lacked a binding agent, which was what the chocolate did in Lisa's recipe.

This is actually my second attempt at making this recipe. The first time, I allowed the dough to rise for far too long (I think it was over 4 hours) because I'd slept right through my alarm. Whilst the bread still tasted all right, it was visually unappealing - sorta flattened and pathetic-looking. That was lesson number 1: don't over-proof your dough. Lesson number 2 was to cover the bread with foil 20 or 30 minutes into the baking, to stop the surface of the bread from browning too much. I'm in love with the burnished hue of my second loaf, but my first loaf honestly looked like poo, if you'll pardon my bluntness.

 

I really like the colour of my second loaf!

So, how did it taste? Allow me to divulge some embarrassing info about myself. For a while, I tried to convince myself that I hated the taste of bread. That it was basically a tasteless lump of gluten, and in addition to being so bad for my waistline, was terrible for my health and I would do well to avoid it for the rest of my life. Let me say now that, oh man, I was totally bullsh*tting myself. Who was I trying to kid? I LOVE bread. If I could be like my naturally super-skinny friend who habitually downs plates of pasta, I would happily eat bread for all three meals, plus snacks. 

Unfortunately, cruel fate has gifted a carb-lover like myself with the metabolism of a tortoise, and consequently, I limit myself to breadstuff only occasionally. This loaf was totally worth the carb-overload. Calling it "raisin toast" would be the ultimate insult. It's a dense, heavy loaf, and although the crumb may feel dry to the touch, it actually tastes very moist. The raisins have become all plump and juicy from absorbing the liquid from the surrounding dough, and despite all the sugar I stuffed into the dough, it is not too sweet to make a sandwich out of. In fact, I think it would go quite well with a sharp, salty cheddar. The only thing I would change is to increase the amount of cinnamon, as I couldn't really taste it.

  

Here's a walkthrough of the recipe, with accompanying pictures. I really do apologise for not posting more frequently. I truly appreciate the time you have taken to read through my humble blog. I do hope you give this Challah recipe a go, because it is fantastic and completely worthy of a Daring Bakers Challenge! :D

Recipe tutorial: Raisin and Cinnamon Swirl Challah

Makes one 950g loaf; adapted from Maggie Glezer's recipe

Ingredients

For the dough:

7g instant yeast

500g bread flour (+ extra in case your dough is too wet)

170g warm water

2 large eggs + 1 for glazing

110g vegetable oil (I used corn oil)

1.5tsp (8g) salt

55g white granulated sugar

 

Warm water not pictured

Baked cinnamon sugar doughnuts

Hello again! It's been a while, hasn't it? It's the same deal as before: my studies have picked up pace, leaving little to no time for leisure. Which simply means that I make time for it anyway, at the expense of not immersing myself completely in the academia. It does bring up feelings of guilt, but I think I'm getting by well enough, and anyway, it takes only a baked cinnamon sugar doughnut or two to make the uneasiness go away.

Gosh, it almost sounds like a case of substance abuse. Well, you know what they say about sugar addiction - it's a real phenomenon! Don't be fooled by the fact that these are "baked"; just because there wasn't any deep-frying involved does not make these a health food xD No, these are simply doughnut-shaped mini cakes, dusted all over with a layer of crunchy, cinnamon sugar. Sounds good, right?

These cuties measure around 2 inches in diameter each, meaning that even if you were to scoff three or four at once *raises hand in shame*, you'd only look like a mini 'nutter instead of a regular-sized one. Hoho, you like or doughnut like my joke? Okay, okay, I'll stop. You'll need a special baking tin for these; I purchased mine from Victoria's Basement. The tin's not much good for anything else, but I reckon if you rock up to a party with two dozens of these, you'll earn yourself a hole heap of praise so it's worth it. 'Hole', geddit? Doh!

Recipe for Baked Cinnamon Sugar Doughnuts

Makes 22-24 mini doughnuts


Ingredients

For the batter:
1 1/4 cups cake flour (regular plain flour is okay)
1/2 cup granulated white sugar
1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 large egg
1 1/2 tablespoon melted butter

For the cinnamon sugar coating:
Around 3/4 cup granulated white sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 220 degrees Celsius (or 425 degrees Fahrenheit).
2. Grease your specialty mini doughnut pan with oil or butter.
3. Sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, nutmeg and salt.
4. In a separate bowl, combine melted butter, buttermilk and eggs, and beat well.
5. Combine dry and wet ingredients, and mix gently until just incorporated. Do not over-mix.
6. Fill each doughnut mold only half full.
7. Bake for 4-6 minutes, or until doughnut is springy to the touch.
8. Trying not to burn your fingers, pry doughnuts out of the molds while they are still relatively hot, and roll them around in the cinnamon sugar coating mixture. The coating will only stick while doughnuts are hot. If you find that it's not sticking, brush some melted butter onto the surface of the doughnut before dredging it in the sugar.

Joconde Imprime birthday cake

Back when I was in high school, I used to wish for my birthday to fall on a weekday, so that all my friends could wish me a happy birthday in person. Pretty narcissistic, no? I'd even let them know the day before so that they wouldn't forget. The few that did forget got the cold shoulder treatment and we've never spoken since - kidding, kidding! But I really did get upset when my family forgot to say "happy birthday!". It's usually because we had already celebrated it the weekend before.

Last week, we celebrated my sister's birthday with a nice dinner out at Dooleys in Lidcombe. I always get major guilt when it comes to birthdays during this time of year, because they usually coincide with the end of a university teaching period, and that means EXAMS. And when you literally have a mountain of textbooks to get through, and fifty thousand lectures to revise, and...I think you get my point. It's hard to find the time to bake your relatives a beautiful birthday cake, even though you really, really want to. And if it so happened that their birthday fell on a weekday; well, the chances of making them a cake just went from 'unlikely' to 'impossible'.

However, it appears that the stars aligned on my sister's birthday and, not only did I not have exams coming up in the near future, I got the day off from uni! A bit of research and planning beforehand meant that I was able to put together this joconde imprime birthday cake with relative ease. I especially credit the Daring Bakers challenge from a while back, and all the blog entries it'd spawned. No doubt it would take some practice yet for my joconde imprime to look as good as some of the ones made by other bloggers.

It tasted better than it looked!

As for the filling - I decided early on that I wanted several, distinct layers. My brainstorming yielded the following: a cream cheese mousse at the bottom, with a layer of strawberries in the middle, and topped with a berry mousse of some kind. As you can see from the picture above, things didn't exactly go according to plan. The cream cheese mousse turned out all right, although I would use a tad less gelatin in the future (or go with sheet instead of powdered). The fresh strawberry middle layer was replaced with plums, due to the fact that 1) plums are cheaper and 2) I needed the precious punnet of strawberries for decorating the top of the cake. And as for the berry mousse...major, MAJOR disaster. Seriously, the moment I saw the mousse splitting - it felt like my heart was being split apart as well, no joke. I beat myself up over it for days afterwards, regretting the time, materials and effort wasted.

And so I baked a sponge cake and used that instead that as the top layer. It looked rather plain, so I covered it with jelly and strawberries. I wish I could say that this cake was what I'd envisioned all along, but the truth is that my cakes often bear no resemblance to the original plans. But since those original plans exist only in my head, I guess no one else will be any the wiser, right? :D

Degustation dinner at Al Muntaha, Dubai

Dubai - what a city! For those of us who never quite excelled at geography in high school, Dubai is not located in India (I deserve any judgement you throw my way), but is in fact one of the seven cities (or 'Emirates') of the United Arab Emirates. The UAE itself is situated on the Persian Gulf, and lies north of Saudi Arabia, west of Oman, and south of Iran.

Image from wikipedia; amateur annotations my own.

Dubai is a shopaholic's paradise, and those with the resources may splurge to their hearts' content on designer fashion wear, beautifully crafted jewellery from the gold souks, and - my personal favourite - edible goodies from various gourmet food stores. Truth be told, my own relatively modest 'resources' restricted my splurges to the edible variety; think of how many bars of camel milk chocolate one can buy for the price of a Louis Vuitton bag!

The Burj Al Arab

Designed to resemble the sail of a ship, the Burj Al Arab is described as a "7-star hotel", and is the 4th tallest hotel in the world. Room prices apparently vary from $1000 to $27000 per night. Egads! For that amount of money, I'd rather book myself into a couple of degustation dinners. And still have enough left over to buy a cat. I've always wanted a cat.

The very cool, futuristic roof design of Al Muntaha restaurant

I was delighted to find out that we would be celebrating a family member's birthday at Al Muntaha, one of the restaurants in the hotel. Not only would I have the opportunity to check out the hotel's interior design, I would also get to enjoy a 6-course degustation dinner while suspended 200m above the Persian Gulf. 

Complimentary bread basket

Soon after we were seated, our server brought over two bread baskets and pats of salted and unsalted butter.

Unsalted butter on left, salted on right

The bread wasn't amazing, but I ate loads of it anyway. I've always harboured the irrational fear that I would starve while dining at a fine restaurant, because of the legendary tiny portions. As it turned out, we left the restaurant feeling comfortably stuffed. I needn't have worried - the portion sizes were reasonable, and the food was so rich that a little went a long way!

Complimentary amuse-bouche

I didn't note down what the three elements of the amuse-bouche was, but I think the soup was pumpkin, and the stuff in the spoon is cucumber salad. No idea about the middle one.

Yellow fin tuna tartare, wasabi, confit ginger, soy & coriander, dashi broth

Our server, who was very friendly and had a nice, soothing voice, acquired a copy of the degustation menu for me to keep as a souvenir. I can therefore describe the rest of the meal in better detail. The picture above shows our first proper course for the degustation. The tartare tasted exactly the way it's described. The dashi broth reminded me of those packet miso soups. Sorry.

The tuna tartare

Seeing the next course on the menu had me buzzing with anticipation even before they'd brought out the dish.

Escalope of Foie Gras, wild mushroom fazzoletti, winter truffle emulsion

I won't pretend that I understood half the words in its description, but FOIE GRAS and TRUFFLE jumped out at me. It's like a foodie wet dream come true, yes? I admit that my excitement was partly due to the hype and 'aura of chicness' surrounding foie gras and truffle, but there was a large part of me that was genuinely interested in tasting the two ingredients. Whilst I wouldn't go so far as to describe my first bite of the foie gras as "transcendental", it did cause this euphoric feeling that could best be likened to the first time I ate butter on its own. It was like, 'wow, I didn't know so much flavour could be concentrated into such a small package!' Sadly, only that euphoric feeling has stayed with me; I have already forgotten the taste and scent of both the foie gras and the truffle :'(

Seared Norwegian scallop, declinaison of Topinambourg, aged balsamic

The scallops were well-cooked, the artichoke ("Topinambourg") puree tasted interesting, and the concentrated drizzles of balsamic vinegar balanced out the fattiness of the scallops. I liked it.

Grilled Angus beef fillet, pea puree, beetroot fondant, pomme puree beef jus

This was the last of our savoury courses. I felt assured by this point that I was not going to starve from eating a degustation meal ;) The beef was very tender; a bit too soft, I thought. Possibly cooked sous vide beforehand? 

Brillat savarin sorbet, poached quince, star anise sabayon, candied ginger

I had no idea what this dessert would taste like. It looked like some sort of panna cotta, so I was pleasantly surprised when my first spoonful tasted like blue cheese! I found out later that brillat-savarin is a type of cheese - a triple cream brie, to be exact. This dish has inspired me to incorporate savoury cheeses into my future desserts.

Winter fruit & balsamic compote, chocolate & raspberry chantilly

This was our second dessert course, and final course for the degustation. This dish was visually stunning, but left me uninspired taste-wise. The pairing of (what tasted like) chocolate-coated fruit cake and raspberry sorbet was not ideal.

The restaurant also kindly gave us a cake to celebrate our family member's birthday. We had it for lunch the next day :D

Over all, this was an experience to be treasured. The food was undoubtedly delicious, just slightly unmemorable. Perhaps I set my standards too high? Did I go into the degustation with unrealistic expectations in my head, because I had read about so many other degustation meals with far more breath-taking dishes? Watching the documentary ' el Bulli: The Last Waltz' on the plane probably hadn't helped either ;) Still, I feel very grateful to have had the opportunity to dine in such an environment. 

Gelato Messina, Darlinghurst

OH YESSS - I have finally made the trip to Gelato Messina in Darlinghurst!

I have literally spent weeks fantasising about this visit. It got so out of hand that I travelled by light-rail to its other store at The Star, in Pyrmont (not realising at the time that the Darlinghurst store was actually closer) two weeks ago, just to take the edge off my cravings. I had a scoop of the delicious 'Apple Pie' gelato, and that in combination with three macarons from Adriano Zumbo a few stores down sent me straight into a sugar coma. Not an entirely unpleasant way to round off the working week.

However, my brief encounter with the "best gelato in Australia" at The Star only intensified my desire to visit the flagship store. It was mostly borne out of a sense of curiosity over the 'Creative Department (Laboratorio and Patisserie)' which recently opened next to its main store at the Darlinghurst location. From what I'd seen on other people's blogs, as well as on Messina's own website, the Laboratorio sells an amazing array of gelato-based cakes, in single-serves or as big cakes which will feed 14-16 people.

One of the big cakes: 'Dr Evil's Magic Mushroom'

My jaw dropped when I saw the 'Dr Evil's Magic Mushroom'. Or rather, a whole troop of them (yes, "troop" is the collective noun for mushrooms!). Fingers-crossed that Messina keeps making them until the end of this year, because I cannot think of a cake I want more for my birthday!

Some more large cakes

All of the large cakes looked fantastic.

And still some more.

As did the small cakes.

The small mushroom cakes are called 'Mini Me', lol xD 

It was very cool (pun intended!) that some of the small cakes were being made on counters right next to the entrance to the lab. My friend P., who'd met up with me for an ice cream date, and I watched the making of the 'Samurai' for a while, before proceeding to the main store for some gelato! 

The 'Samurai', which to me looks like an 

upside-down Magnum that's been attacked by Gloomy Bear 

 We did originally have plan to sample at least one of the small cakes, and P. in particular was looking forward to trying the 'Darlo Bar', which is an ice cream sandwich consisting of peanut butter gelato and spiced gingerbread, amongst other things. However, I really wanted to try some of the gelato flavours which were on the 'Specials' board that day. P. was nice enough to split a 'Misto' with me - a sampler or tasting plate of 5 gelato flavours, if you will.

As you can probably imagine, we had a very hard time picking only 5 flavours. Everything sounded so good!

But choose we did...there was the '1985', which was from the 'Specials' board. It's a coconut gelato, with huge shards of chocolate and cherry jam stirred in. It does look like a lot of jam, but it wasn't overly sweet. I really liked this one! The gelato tasted strongly of coconut, and I think I could taste bits of desiccated coconut in there.

The '1985'

The 'Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwich', also from the 'Specials' board, had real bits of bread in it! Well, "vanilla soaked brioche', to be specific :D The gelato was peanut butter flavoured, and the raspberry jam was swirled in. I love my peanut butter, so I loved this flavour. An even stronger peanut butter flavour would have been even better.

'Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwich' - can you see the bread?

The 'Boss's Wife', consisting of "coffee and hazelnut gelato with hazelnut and white chocolate praline", was my favourite. There's no mistaking that this gelato had COFFEE in it - I got a caffeine kick out of it, and I usually take my coffee strong and black. I admit to being guilty of deliberately finding the pieces of praline, and eating them while my friend P. was preoccupied with the other flavours.

'Boss's Wife' - I hope the actual allusion is a lot more innocent than it sounds ;D

Talking about my friend P.; her favourite flavour was the 'Saffron with Pistachio & Orange Cake', which was also the last 'Specials' flavour that we ordered. No surprise there, as she's a major fan of the pistachio and orange cake that Black Star Pastry in Newtown does. I was happy to let her have her way with it since I was busy prying the praline pieces out of the coffee gelato anyway.

'Saffron with Pistachio & Orange Cake'

And last but not least - the 'Poached Figs in Marsala' was loaded with dried figs, and my friend and I both enjoyed it.

'Poached Figs in Marsala'

The scoops weren't huge, but we had plans to have dinner after our gelato date so we agreed to leave the cakes to another day. And with flavours being changed on a weekly basis, there's no doubt that I will be back for many more visits in the future!

Gelato Messina - Darlinghurst Store/The Creative Department (Laboratorio & Patisserie)

241-243 Victoria Street,

Darlinghurst NSW 2010

Phone: (02) 8354 1223

Website: http://www.gelatomessina.com/