I made neither a carrot cake nor a coconut cake for Easter dessert. My daughter declared that she hates carrot cake AND coconut cake, and my husband – who had requested those specific cakes in the first place – revealed that his suggestions hadn’t been serious, since no one likes carrot or coconut cake except him.

Instead, I made a strawberry cake.

It was an utter failure. I severely underbaked the cake layers, so that there was a circle of nearly raw cake in the center of each. Fortunately, I’d made six cupcakes with the extra batter, so I removed the raw cake using a glass, and filled the cavity in the bottom cake with an upside-down cupcake. Then I filled the hole in the top layer with extra frosting. No one seemed to notice and the cake was quite delicious: light and fluffy and strawberry-y.

I did not take photos of how raw the layers were, or of the cupcake plug; I was trying to hurry to “fix” things before my husband noticed. He tends to execute things perfectly the first time, so he never needs to come up with creative fixes, and my fear was that he would say my cupcake repair job wouldn’t work, or that he would recommend I throw the whole thing out, and I wanted to try my solution without any anti-problem-solving vibes.

While we ate the strawberry cake, I noted that it was a second choice after carrot cake, which was when I discovered that both of my parents LOVE carrot cake. Okay then.

So I made a carrot cake for their birthdays. Their birthdays are a day apart, and we took them the cake on the day in between so we could give them presents and celebrate with them.

In advance of the baking, I did a LOT of research on carrot cakes. I read a TON of carrot cake recipes. My husband and parents both felt strongly that a carrot cake should have raisins and nuts; my parents were not a huge fan of the idea of pineapple; my dad was the sole “meh” on including coconut in the carrot cake while my mom and husband were solidly “pro coconut,” except in the frosting.

Might as well throw some bananas and tomatoes in there too, is how I feel about carrot cake.

It was surprisingly difficult to find a recipe that included all the things they wanted while excluding all the things they didn’t. I ended up mashing several recipes together to make a carrot cake. Cake hubris at its finest, no? Yet somehow, against all odds, the cake turned out perfectly. My husband liked it so much, he requested that I write down the recipe I used so I can make it again. The recipe is at the bottom of this post.

If you are a person who dislikes recipe blogs because they blather about not-the-recipe for several paragraphs before posting the recipe, and prefer pithy gets-to-the-point recipe posts, well, we’re already 400+ words in at this point and perhaps you’ve already realized you’re reading the wrong blog.

(Possibly you come here because you enjoy or are at least tolerant of my tendency to blather. And blather I shall.)

Cake Expectations

Cake, it seems, has become one of my love languages. Anyone who has read this blog in the past dozen years is well aware of my annual angst over baking a birthday cake for my child. In addition to baking for her, I have now had several opportunities to make cakes for my husband and parents as well.

The thing is, I’m not very good at it. Just reread the bit above about the raw cake centers for a glaring yet all-too-typical example of how not very good at it I am. Something always goes wrong.

• There was the year I ran out of baking powder and had to switch recipes midstream, at which point I realized I didn’t have the right flour, and once I’d used math to sort that, I ended up needing extra batter and had to make a third batch.

• There was the year that I had to switch from nine-inch cake pans to six-inch cake pans in the middle of baking, or my layers would have been much too thin.

• There was the year that MY OVEN STOPPED WORKING in the middle of piping leopard spots into my cake and I had to beg my neighbor to let me use hers.

• There was the year I ran out of lemon curd halfway through filling cupcakes and the year I overmixed the batter and the years that are lost to time because I failed to post about them.  

• This year, in addition to the raw cake layers from Easter, I also managed to somehow split the cream cheese frosting for the carrot cake, which required some tinkering to fix.

I think, over the years, I’ve mellowed a bit. I have more than a decade of cake-baking experience under my belt, and that makes me more confident that I can handle issues should they arise. (Over-confident, some might say.) Of course, I can simply start over if I need to.

But even with the mellowness of age and experience, there is usually that moment when something goes wrong, and I’m trying to come up with a solution, and I’m conscious of the time ticking down to the point at which I will require a complete and edible cake to serve to guests, and the kitchen is over-hot and I still have to shower or dry my hair or get dressed or finish wrapping gifts. THIS is the point when I begin to panic, erasing any and all confidence I began with.

Because I am aware that I’m not very good at baking, I tend to angst about the cake baking quite a bit in advance. I scour recipes. I ask probing, clarifying questions. I research and buy additional tools (in past years, I’ve added a cake leveler and a cake turntable to my collection for this reason).  Over the years, many people have offered up gentle and reasonable suggestions, like… Maybe just BUY A CAKE. That would lift all the stress and anxiety off of my shoulders. It would absolve me of any guilt should the cake not taste utterly delicious. It would free up my time to be more present with my family (and less fretful) or to do any number of things I eschew when I’m in a baking frenzy (showering, exercising, eating meals). And yet I stubbornly persist in making (subpar) cakes.

What kind of cake related character flaw IS this? Some sort of narcissism? Martyr complex?

In my head, it is love. I love these people so much, I want to mark their birthdays in a special way. I love them so much, I want to give them the exact cake they want – no generic yellow cake from a box, no over-sweet chemical-flavored frosting from the grocery store, no overpriced but not-quite-right cake from a bakery.

(I promise you, this is not some belief that MY cakes are better than perfectly serviceable store-bought cakes. For many years, my husband’s birthday request was for a Dairy Queen ice cream cake, and if that’s what he wanted, that’s what he got. My mother-in-law LOVES the frosting a local bakery uses for their cakes, even though I find it tasteless and greasy, so we have gotten her cakes from that bakery for her birthday. If you have a specific treat in mind, you should have it, especially on your birthday!)

It also feels meaningful, to me, to spend several hours thinking about a loved one while I’m baking their Ideal Cake. It’s a personal way to honor them, to think about all the birthdays we’ve been lucky enough to celebrate together, to cherish their presence in my life. This sounds really goopy and kind of stupid, but these are the thoughts that go through my mind while I plan the cake and make my grocery list and do the shopping and measure out the ingredients. I hum and smile to myself.

When they cut into the cake, put that first bite into their mouth, I can finally relax. I have done all I can.

I know – I know – it is Just A Cake, one cake, one moment in a whole long lifetime of moments big and small.

I also know this: The last bit of frosting will melt onto a tongue, the dishes will be rinsed and tucked into the dishwasher, the final crumbs will be swept into the sink and the gift wrap will lie crumpled in the trash. The celebration and the cake will soon join the blur of day-to-day. But I have tried, in my small, ordinary, imperfect way, to make my loved one’s wishes come true, to make them feel seen, and cared for, and understood. Maybe that’s too much to expect from a cake, but it’s why I keep baking.

Carrot Cake

Note on the recipe: This is a mashup of three recipes: “Bill’s big carrot cake” from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking cookbook;  “Mother Thomas’s carrot cake” from Jelly Jules; and Sam’s “Best carrot cake recipe” from SugarSpunRun. The resulting cake is what my mother calls “dense and heavy,” which is exactly what she wanted from a carrot cake. The frosting started out as a pretty standard cream cheese frosting recipe, but I ended up adding a little of this and that to get it to work the way I wanted to.

Note on the serving size: This carrot cake recipe produced enough batter to fill two-and-a-half 6-inch cake pans with enough leftover for six standard cupcakes. The frosting recipe produced enough frosting to cover a mid-size sedan.

Cake Ingredients:

Dry
2 ½ cups (315 g) all-purpose flour
1 ½ tsp baking powder
1 ½ tsp baking soda
2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp salt

Filling
3 cups (340 g) grated peeled carrots see Note 1
1 cup (125 g) coarsely chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)
1 cup shredded coconut (optional)
½ cup golden raisins (optional)

Wet
1 cup (200 g) white sugar
1 cup (200 g) brown sugar
4 large eggs, at room temperature see Note 2
1 cup canola or vegetable oil
½ cup buttermilk see Note 3

Frosting Ingredients:

4 oz unsalted butter, at room temperature
12 oz cream cheese, at room temperature
¼ tsp salt
¼ cup sour cream, at room temperature
4 cups (500 g) powdered sugar

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 325 F/163 C. (see Note 4)
2. Line your baking pans (see Note 5) with parchment paper.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk the dry ingredients (2 ½ cups/315 g all-purpose flour, 1 ½ tsp baking powder, 1 ½ tsp baking soda, 2 tsp ground cinnamon, 1 tsp ground nutmeg, 1 tsp salt) together.
4. In a medium bowl, mix the filling ingredients (3 cups/340 g grated peeled carrots, 1 cup/125 g coarsely chopped pecans/walnuts, 1 cup shredded coconut, ½ cup golden raisins) together.
5. In a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the sugars (1 cup/200 g white sugar, 1 cup/200 g brown sugar) and the oil (1 cup canola or vegetable oil) on medium speed until well-mixed.
6. With the mixer still running, add the eggs, one at a time, until incorporated.
7. Scrape down the sides of the mixer, then add the buttermilk and mix until incorporated.
8. After scraping down the sides of the mixer again, add the dry ingredients to the mixer. On low speed, mix until a few streaks of flour remain.
9. Using a spatula, gently fold in the filling ingredients.
10. Divide the batter among the baking pans and bake them for 30-50 minutes, rotating them at the halfway point. (see Note 6) Check for doneness by inserting a toothpick in the center of each cake; the toothpick should come out clean or with a few crumbs.
11. Allow the cakes to cool for five minutes in their pans, then, using a knife to release the edges of the cake from the pans, remove them to a wire rack to cool completely.
12. While the cakes are cooling, combine the cream cheese and butter in your mixer on medium speed until smooth.
13. With the mixer running, add the salt and sour cream and mix until incorporated.
14. Scrape down the bowl of the mixer, then add powdered sugar, one cup at a time, and mix until smooth.
15. Wait until your cake is completely cool before frosting.
16. Store frosted cake in the fridge for 3ish days, or wrap tightly in plastic wrap to freeze.

Notes:

1. I grated my own carrots because I’d read that using pre-grated carrots didn’t add enough moisture to the cake. But I haven’t tried pre-shredded carrots my self, so maybe they are a fine and useful shortcut.
2. I often forget to remove the eggs from the fridge early enough to bring them to room temperature, so I have found that submerging them in a small bowl of warm water does the trick in about 5-10 minutes.
3. I did not have buttermilk on hand, so I added ½ tablespoon of white vinegar to a measuring cup, then filled it up to the ½-cup mark with whole milk, and let the mixture sit for about 5ish minutes.
4. Depending on the size of your cake pans, you may want to set a cookie sheet on the oven rack while you pre-heat the oven. When you are ready to bake your cake, set the filled cake pans on the hot cookie sheet. This enables easier rotating.
5. My inspiration recipes called for a variety of pans (8-inch round cake pans, a 10-x15-inch rectangular cake pan, or 9-inch round cake pans). I used 6-inch round cake pans, but then I was able to make another 6-inch round that wasn’t quite as tall plus 6 cupcakes with the remaining batter.
6. The baking time will vary based on your oven’s temperament, the size of your baking pans, and on other mysterious factors I cannot identify. For my 6-inch baking pans, I started with about 15 minutes, rotated the pans, then baked them for an additional ten minutes before testing the centers with a toothpick. Then I rotated them again and continued to bake them, checking them at 5-minute intervals (and rotating them each time) until they were done. For my cupcakes, the initial bake was 10 minutes, then I checked them at 5-minute intervals after rotating them until they were done.