Yesterday I made a cake for a bake-off at my husband's workplace. It's a fundraiser, with proceeds going to fight malaria. I'm used it as an opportunity to test out a recipe combination I wanted to try. After my success making a Smith Island cake, I thought it would be fun to make a Brazilian carrot cake version to enter in next year's fair. This is my first chance to try out my concept.
First I made the batter for the cake:
First I made the batter for the cake:
Carrots (3 large or 5 medium or 7 small)
1 cup oil
4 eggs
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
dash of salt
1 heaping tsp. baking powder
Blend the carrots, oil and eggs in a blender and then mix in a bowl with the rest of the ingredients. Weighing this out (the cake layers each need 200g) yielded only 6 layers. For future reference, make 1.5 batches to get 8-9 layers of cake. Other things to note: bake at 350 for 13 minutes per 2 layers. I had a few technical difficulties here, with my oven mitt gouging one of the layers (I'm using it anyway, I plan to fill up the hole with chocolate) and another layer getting stuck on one side because I didn't have enough baking spray.
Next, the fudge frosting:
12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips
1-1/4 cups heavy cream
1-1/4 cups sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla
10 T. butter at room temperature
Heat the cream, sugar and vanilla and pour over the chocolate. Whisk until melted and smooth. Add the butter and whisk until smooth. Chill for about an hour and then use to frost the cake.
The cake chilled overnight and was taken in today for the fundraiser. I suspect I won't win the bake-off but my cake did seem to get a fair number of votes at least! Here's a photo of it being served: