The Thanksgiving Carrot Cake

Adam and I were going to a friend's place for Thanksgiving dinner. With both of us not growing up here, Thanksgiving is not part of our culture. He's been here longer though, so he's gotten the feel of it, and they've had several Thanksgiving dinners and all with his family. As for myself, it is only my second Thanksgiving, having spent the first one is Houston with the Mantarings.

We were going to Fort Bragg for Thanskgiving and Adam's friend John knows that I bake and he asked if I could bake a Carrot Cake. "Well, definitely", I said. I know of a killer recipe from Sarah, I made it once and it was just heavenly. Sarah's Carrot cake recipe is so moist and just delicious!

I made the whole Carrot cake, and frosted it with Sarah's matching Cream Cheese frosting. I love Cream Cheese frosting. They're tangy, not so sweet, a little sour and there's a bite to it. Sarah's recipe calls for two 9x2-in pan, and I made mine on two 8x2-in ones so I had some leftover batter which I made into mini cupcakes. I started baking pretty late Wednesday already so after I finished, it was already starting to get dark and we had to go to Adam's house first for an early Thanksgiving dinner since we were leaving the next day. I brought the mini cupcakes to Adam's house and I am surprised that even the kids loved it! I thought they'd never eat anything with carrots, especially for a cake, but they muched on it like they're eating chocolates.

So with all the running and buzzing that I did before our Fort Bragg trip, I was not able to take a picture of my Carrot Cake. I knew I would not be able to, so I purposely left three mini cupcakes for a picture when I come back. And the mini cupcakes were even better after being left in the fridge for three days. Haha.

Red Velvet, Vanilla-Lemon and Carrot Cupcakes

These are some of the cupcakes that I made last week because I had orders of the Red Velvet Cupcakes and the Vanilla-Lemon Cupcakes. While at it, I made some Carrot Cupcakes to give as samples. All recipes are of course from baking911.

The Red Velvet cupcakes were frosted with Cream Cheese Frosting. I love Cream Cheese Frosting on anything, and with Red Velvet cupcakes, it's just perfect. I still can't get enough of the red coloring, it's just lovely.


These are some of the Carrot cupcakes that I made, also frosted with Cream Cheese Frosting. Cream Cheese is expensive here in the Philippines!

And lastly, these are the Vanilla-Lemon cupcakes that I made, frosted with Italian Buttercream in Vanilla.

I gave this sample box to Ice and Ly, and they loved it. Even Bry who does not eat carrots tried the Carrot cupcakes. The cupcakes were decorated with sugar gumpaste and dragees.

Current prices are 520php (box of 12) for Carrot, Red Velvet. 460 (box of 12) for Vanilla-Lemon, Chocolate. Minimum order is box of 12 per flavor.

Pecan Carrot Cupcakes

Today's my first time making a Carrot Cake and for the longest time, I never fancied making one. I tasted a Carrot Cake once and it was horrible, hence my dislike. However, over the past few days, a Carrot Cake recipe caught my attention and it's a very simple recipe called Classic Carrot Cake by Susan Purdy which I found in baking911 and had been since adapted by Sarah Phillips. I decided to give it a try after buying some carrots in the grocery for my chopseuy.

The batter was very easy to make. I had almost a cup full of grated carrots on the side before I started with everything else. The recipe also uses a few spices like cinnamon and ground nutmeg to, well...spice it up! After mixing everything, the resulting batter was a little thin but should hold good enough in the cupcake liners. While walnuts are regular garnish for Carrot Cakes (as I read it, it's not like I have eaten a fair share of Carrot Cakes!), I opted to use Pecans instead. The chopped Pecans were then added last to the batter.

I made a very small recipe (half of the original recipe) so that I would be making only a very few cuppies just in case I don't like it. The reduced recipe yielded batter for 7 liners. So I then poured (yes it's that thin, it can be poured!) the batter into the cupcake liners and baked for around 20mins. The cupcakes domed nicely after baking. I immediately took it out of the oven, took the cupcakes out of the tin and then let it cool in a wire rack for around 10 minutes. While the cupcakes were cooling, I started making the Cream Cheese Frosting for the cupcakes. I love Cream Cheese Frosting so I was telling the Carrot cupcakes to better be good or else I'd be wasting my cream cheese over them! LOL!
With everything ready, what is left is the assembly of the cupcakes. I swirled the frosting over the cupcakes and I also topped it with a homemade sugar roses. The colors of the roses are not my colors (Burgundy and Peach) but I tried it because those little color bottles are still unopened (plus my Pink and Yellow were almost done). I think the new colors worked beautifully with the Off-White frosting.

I was prepared to hate the taste of my beautiful little cupcakes. After staring at it for a few minutes and contemplating on whether to taste it or not, I decided to try it since no one else is here to try it. I took a bite and was pleasantly surprised at how good it tasted. It was fluffy and moist, and the the carrots were not overpowering. Needless to say, I loved how it tasted like and I will definitely be baking more of this. The cream cheese frosting provided a nice tangy contrast to the cinnamon/nutmeg spices. Overall, it's just lovely. ;)