Happy birthday Tanya

Well, here's the reason I tried out the carrot cake in a round tin a week or so ago - it's my friend Tanya's birthday tomorrow and she requested a carrot cake as her treat.  Her daughter requested the cake be fully iced, so their wishes were my command.  And, just because I can, I coloured the orange cream cheese icing in a pale orange colour and topped it with stars and red and gold glitter. 

I mean really, if you can have edible glitter on a cake - why wouldn't you?
From an academic point of view, the taste test reviews on the practice cake were very positive so I didn't bake this one any longer than the previous.  And I nearly doubled the amount of icing made, which gave plenty to cover the cake with a layer inside too.  I sent it away with Tanya then remembered that because it has cream cheese icing, it needs to be refridgerated.  Luckily, I have her number so was able to pass on this important info, phew!

An old favourite, carrot cake

We offer carrot cake as one of the standard flavours we can make, however I haven't done one for a while.  A friend has ordered one for her birthday next month, so I felt it was high time the recipe was practiced, to make sure it'd be ready.  I've made this recipe successfully a few times, but always in a large traybake tin.  So this was a new way, in a round tin for presentation.  Luckily, after my last disaster - sorry cake, I used a deep enough tin and the mix had plenty of room to rise.  And it did, beautifully.  But I feel it'll need another 10 minutes or so cooking time next time, the lower half seems less well-done than I would have liked (proof will be in the tasting tomorrow).  Annoyingly, an inserted skewer comes out clean at this stage of cooking/baking even though the cake isn't totally done.  Makes it quite tricky to judge without tasting...  I wonder what other home-bakers do??

Then it was a case of seeing how much icing the recipe made, when translated to a round layered cake.  The height of the final product was such that it could, conceivably, be layered three rather than two times.  I just did two layers, and only managed enough cream cheese with orange zest icing to do the central layer and a thick-ish one on top.  Visual reviews are positive though, which is encouraging.  Thanks!