cake is my love language

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Carrot Cake

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.

Slightly wonky but you can’t *really* tell it was a diaster.

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.

Hot tip: Macerated strawberries can hide a multitude of sins.

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.
  • 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.
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Five for Friday

It’s Friday! Here are five things on my mind. Be aware they are mainly about packing; forewarned is forearmed.

  • We have closed on the new house! This is very exciting and also very anticlimactic as we will not be able to move in for more than a month. (One of the things we did to “sweeten the pot” when we made our offer was to allow the sellers to stay an extra month. In this market, we made the best offer we could and our realtor said this would help, so we did it.) People keep asking how closing went. “Were there any surprises?” my dad wanted to know. Um. No? It makes me a little nervous, how well it went, because people seem surprised that it was so seamless. A notary met us at my husband’s hospital, we signed a billion papers, then we wired over the down payment. Simple. I think? But all this interest in whether it went well makes me uneasy. Did we overlook something important? WERE there surprises and we just didn’t register them as such? Was it too easy???? Maybe everyone’s so interested because we didn’t make a big deal of it. Because of the anticlimax. 
  • I finally packed a box. It was MUCH HARDER than it should be. I decided, after fretting all over the blog about it, that I would start with the guest room closet. We don’t use the stuff in that closet. There are books in the closet, plus old fancy clothes we will probably never wear again, plus lots of other things. I could totally empty it out, was my naïve thinking. Well. I did manage to fill a giant bag of To Donate items, and half-fill another giant bag with trash. But then I had to stop. The items in the closet are either too big to fit nicely into a box (my daughter’s sewing machine, for example) or they require some input from my husband (do we really need to keep all those home improvement books?) or I feel like they might actually have alternative uses during the move (like all of the extra towels and blankets – those could be used to cushion things, or wrap up delicate items right?) (as I am typing this, it is clear I should get a box, grab some of the extra towels, and start packing delicate items). So I ended up abandoning the guest room closet. But! I did manage to clean off the top of my desk in my office and get some tchotchkes off the shelves, like my potato pig and my skier tile. I packed three four boxes of office stuff and made little piles of leftover stuff (“random important things,” “shred or file?,” and “keep”) (why “keep” is separate from “random important things” I’m not sure I can articulate, but they are different) that are now taking up all the real estate on my desk. I haven’t figured out yet what to do with the items inside the desk – but maybe they can stay there! 
  • I also cleaned out the top shelf of our pantry, on which lived an assortment of things like cookie cutters, the popcorn popper, an ice cream machine, and a thousand cake pans. How many cake pans does one person need? I usually make layer cakes for birthdays, so I did not even THINK about getting rid of any of the regular cake pans. And we probably don’t need two springform pans, but it’s good to have a backup in case I have some sort of emergency that can only be addressed with multiple cheesecakes. There were a few things that I have literally never used – two Bundt pans, a tart pan, and a Madeleine pan – and probably should consider donating, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it yet. Maybe the me who lives in our new house makes Bundt cakes all the time! I threw all these things, alongside a pizza peel, some disposable grill pans, and some plasticware I use solely when I make food for other families, into two boxes and topped them with some insulated grocery bags. (I did have a moment where I thought, might we NEED the insulated grocery bags during the move? But I pushed past it. They are on the very top of the box anyway, for easy access.) I was also able to clean out half of the drawer under the oven (what do you keep in the drawer under the oven? or do you use it as a warming drawer as I think it is intended to be used?), in which I keep additional cake pans (I have SO MANY cake pans), brownie pans, and loaf pans. (Have I ever used a loaf pan? Maybe once or twice, to make banana bread. Certainly not enough times to require THREE loaf pans.) So that’s two more boxes packed. (This is on top of the glassware I was able to pack away. We have a bunch of wine glasses and champagne flutes that we got for our wedding, nearly 14 years ago, and we somehow had kept ALL THE BOXES, ready to spring into use at this very moment.) (There are still a bunch of martini glasses and non-fancy Champagne flutes in the glassware cupboard that I will have to deal with, as well as an entire shelf’s worth of crystal goblets that I inherited from someone’s grandmother.) (At what point am I no longer actually writing parentheticals, but am instead continuing on with this bullet point? It seems I cannot stop.) Next up in packing: the winter clothes, which should probably have been the first thing I addressed (I know you all said BOOKS but I have not been able to bring myself to do that yet), but which I have not, in fact, addressed. The thing is that I am PACKING THINGS and hopefully the momentum will continue to build.
  • One thing we want to do before we move in is to install new flooring. The carpet in the house is uniformly kind of… tired. Which happens after you’ve lived in a place for more than a decade! Especially when you have children and a dog! I get it! But I want fresh, clean carpet. Plus, the downstairs has different flooring in nearly every room, which I personally hate, especially because the new house has a really nice flow from room to room so the flooring shifts are extremely obvious and choppy. I want one seamless type of flooring. I know from experience that once all the furniture is in place, the idea of moving it again to install new flooring will be too awful to bear. So! We are getting everything installed before we move in. Supposedly. The catch – there is always a catch – is that manufacturing and shipping delays mean we need to order the flooring NOW if we want it to be installed before we move. It is surprisingly stressful to try to pick out flooring when you don’t have access to the space it will live in and when you are basing your decision off of a single 2” by 3” rectangle. Also surprisingly difficult to choose between two options that look very nearly identical. I think I have landed on “it doesn’t really matter, either will be fine.”
  • My orchid is planning to re-bloom! Here is a non-moving bullet point! This is the orchid I repotted a few months ago. It is so happy that it has decided to delight us all with new blossoms. The process seems to be rather slow, but I doubt it will delay blooming until we move. I am a little anxious about trying to transport it, but it seems to be a determined and sturdy orchid so we’ll see what happens.
In the background there you can see the newest plant acquisition, a mother-in-law’s tongue.
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Friday Randomosity: Of Frazz and Birthdays

What are you doing this weekend? I don’t even KNOW what I’m doing. Or maybe I do? I think my mom and I have plans to maybe go shopping? And while we do that, my dad is going to examine this segment of siding that has decided it is a ruffle. And then maybe I will make dinner? My husband also said something about going to look at outdoor furniture??? Was that this weekend???

I feel so overwhelmed by life – all good things!! everything is good and happy and extremely stressful! – that I can literally only think about the step immediately ahead of me. Right now, that looks drinking some water (per Sarah) and making lunch and doing a tiny brain dump. 

  • This Is Just Mean: As you may have gleaned, I have been in such a state of frazz. SUCH A STATE. I keep doing this thing where my brain will smugly prank me and – this requires an example. I was sitting at Carla’s sports practice, scrolling through Twitter trying to work on my sorely neglected novel, when all of a sudden I saw a tweet that said, simply, “One word to describe Cancers” and my brain helpfully said “Your friend H is a Cancer.” And then my body went cold and my heart skipped because a) H is not a Cancer but b) her birthday was ten days ago did I even acknowledge it???? 

I did acknowledge it, both via text and in person, but it still took me several nearly-avoided-a-car-accident moments to recover from the horror of potentially forgetting a friend’s birthday. WHAT THE HELL, BRAIN? 

Especially what the hell because this has been happening all week. Little pinches in the back of the thigh that have been wildly (if momentarily) terrifying and – so far – completely unhelpful. I am doing the things, I guess, even if I am apparently not making a mental record of them having been done.

  • I’m A Lot Like You: My brain has also been doing that thing (HI NICOLE) where it hyperfocuses on one or two lines of a single song, and then blares those two lines ad infinitum into my skull in the middle of the night. (The song in question is El Scorcho, which I quite like as long as I don’t think too hard about the lyrics.) (The narrator is an entitled dick, is my view when I do think about the lyrics, which I have been a lot because they are always elbowing into my thoughts. A girl does not owe you her interest simply because you have a thing for her. Also, maybe don’t read girls’ diaries?)
  • Tiny Weezer Fan: Speaking of Weezer, if you also have a tiny Weezer fan in your household, I just ordered this T-shirt for Carla. It will be one of her birthday presents and I am so excited for her to open it. 
  • Rev-Up of the Birthday Sads: We are getting SO CLOSE to Carla’s tenth birthday. I am excited and happy because it is a joy to see her grow up, but I am also a little sad. On the way to camp this morning, I literally started crying in the car simply because I thought about one specific moment from her birth. She was born with the umbilical cord around her neck, and was whisked away to the NICU pretty immediately after she was born. I couldn’t move my legs because of the epidural, plus I was shaky and vomity after giving birth, so I remember shrieking at my husband that he needed to go with her. She was brand new! And now she was all alone! Don’t let her be alone!!!! Obviously everything turned out just fine, but the thought of that little new-to-the-world infant, wrenched from her warm cozy womb into a cacophony of unfamiliar blaring light and sound, and then instantly separated from the voices she was accustomed to… Oh my god, it just breaks my heart. Still. 
  • Shellacking the Sad with Other Anxiety! Yay!: So instead of thinking about and possibly dealing with my Feelings, I am masking the sadness with ridiculous worries that are not worries. My latest: Ten is a special age! Should I be doing Something Special? Like, especially special? We are having dinner at Carla’s favorite restaurant with all her grandparents, and then we’ll come home to eat cake (she now wants a vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream topped with raspberries, raspberry jam in between the layers, and a raspberry coulis on the side. “Simple,” she said.) (Maybe something like this? With vanilla instead of raspberry buttercream? Or this one, although it’s got cream cheese frosting instead of buttercream? Or this one, which sounds just right but has a few unusual ingredients that are making me squinty?) and open presents. Is there some sort of special You Are Ten type of gift I should be getting her? What is memorable about your tenth birthday? Or the tenth birthdays of people in your life? Can it just be a normal birthday or do I need to do something extra? And if “yes to extra,” what should that be??? Look at that. I am feeling less sad and more stressed as I type! 
  • Pool Hair Do Care: Let’s ABRUPTLY change subjects! Carla is doing a lot of swimming this summer and her hair is not loving it. She has fine hair. It’s light in color. It’s long (below her shoulders). And it’s wavy. This plus repeated chlorine exposure all adds up to hair that feels brittle and does not brush well. I bought some special shampoo and conditioner designed to help with chlorine removal, but either Carla isn’t using enough of it or it needs more time to work. I’ve tried forcing her to wear a swim cap, but a) I can’t police her at camp and b) she’s already lost one swim cap and the other is so tight it gives her headaches and c) it doesn’t seem like the swim caps are actually water tight anyway. I am NOT a swimmer so if you have any swim-related advice, hair specific or other, I would welcome it. 
  • Bloggy Book Club: I used the shampoo/conditioner purchase as an excuse to buy a copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which I am eager to read as part of Engie’s bloggy book club in July. Are you joining us? I started reading it to Carla this week and her initial impression is that it is boring. I am not sure if she will have a secondary impression because she keeps rejecting my attempts to keep reading. We haven’t even made it through the first chapter! (I do not think it is boring. I think it’s fascinating.) It’s been more than a decade since I first read (listened to) this book, and I’m really excited to see if I love it as much on a second read as I did the first time.
  • Summer Skirt Success: I think I already mentioned this, but I went on a bit of a buying binge in May and got a bunch of cute dresses. This skirt was among them and I wore it for the first time this week and LOVED IT. It is super light, and so long it skims the tops of my feet. I wore it with this bodysuit, which I also surprisingly really like. It’s a nice thick material so that you can’t see a bra underneath it. Well, I didn’t wear, like, a bright purple bra under it or anything so YMMV, I guess. But it’s very soft and I like how smmoth-to-the-body it is compared to a T-shirt; I always feel frumpy when I try to pair a T-shirt with a skirt, but perhaps that’s user error.

All right, I think that’s all I have today. Thanks, as usual, for listening. While things are no less busy around here – and are about to get even busier and more full of change – at least my houseguests are gone and I have the house to myself once more. Laundry is laundrying, the dishwasher is running (somehow we used every single non-specialty drinking glass that I own), and I am starting to feel a teensy bit more normal. My head is still full of Weezer, though. How stupid is it? I can’t talk about it. I gotta sing about it and make a record of my heart.