TWD: Bill's Big Carrot Cake

The theme for TWD this week is carrot cake. I've tried out various recipes from other authors and I was curious to find out how Ms. Greenspan's version will turn out.

After reading through the recipe twice, I've decided to make some slight changes. First of all, I felt that the amount of sugar called for in the recipe would be too much for me and so I only added 75% of the sugar. Secondly, instead of baking 3 individual round cakes and stacked them up with with cream cheese frosting in between, I've decided to take a short cut and bake it in my 10X10 inch square cake pan. This is because I do not have any baking pans of 2-inch height that I can stack them up and fit into my oven and it is also not feasible to bake them individually as the baking time would take at least 2.5 hours.

During the mixing process, the amount of shredded carrot did get me worried though. When I added half of it into the batter, the carrot has already filled up to the brim of the mixing bowl and I had to mix it very slowly. After that, I've decided to add only 50% from the remaining half of the carrots to the batter and gave the leftovers to my rabbits. Lastly, the recipe mentioned that the baking time is 40-50 minutes and I thought, since my cake is thicker, the baking time should be longer. But after 1 hour, the cake was still not cooked. Then I tried to bake for another 15 minutes and again, it was still not done. In the end, I had to prolong the baking time further and to prevent burning, I sat in front of the oven and watched over the cake. In the end, the cake was finally done.... after 1 hour and 40 minutes of baking!

The long baking time did not affect the texture of the cake at all. The cake was still very soft and moist, and the coconut gave an extra kick to the overall texture. To me, the best part from the whole baking experience was licking the paddle of the mixer clean after mixing the cream cheese frosting. :-)

I don't have time to type the whole recipe now, as I need to pack my luggage for my trip tomorrow morning. Do check out the entries from other bloggers from TWD site and you will be able to get the recipe from there.

Recipe can be found here.