Silly Season Gourmet Madness

Well this has been a productive week. It is definitely the silly season in our family with not only Christmas but 3 birthdays in 2 days! Josh's birthday on Dec 11 was also taken by our grandaughter, "the birthday stealer",  as she is known and Big Red's birthday is the following day.  I usually make birthday cakes for all 3 but this year there is a fabulous cake-baking girlfriend to take over the baking of Josh's cake and Little Miss wants a rainbow cake from the Cheescake Shop so I just had to make the obligatory Carrot Cake with an insane amount of cream cheese icing (coronary inducing I am sure) for the man of my life to take to work for morning tea (that's so we don't sit and eat it all ourselves - we have been known to do that!). 
I needed to put on my organisational hat as I had a week full of meetings, work to be done, 2 dinners out and a birthday breakfast to fit in.  On top of that I had seen a fabulous idea to replace the Gingerbread House - a Gingerbread box filled with gingerbread goodness. I decided to bake that for the dinner we were going to share on Friday night, it would suffice for a nibble with coffee plus some treats for the kids and I had done the Gingerbread House for Mid Winter Christmas with this same group of people so I didn't want to repeat it.
A whole day was allocated to cooking and yes, it did take me all day to cook the carrot cake, the Gingerbread box and goodies plus a batch of muesli. In the middle of all that I had to rush off to the gym to help take a class. I was shattered but satisfied by the end of the day.

I turned on the air conditioning so that I didn't expire in the humidity of the storm season and then started with the gingerbread as it needs time to rest in the fridge before working with it.  Once that was resting the oven went on and I started the Carrot Cake.  This recipe was gleaned from the cake shop around the corner from our business back in the 80's.  We paid for far too many slices of this cake in the years that the shop was there.  Eventually the shop closed and as a parting gift Gail gave us her recipe. It is the most delicious Carrot Cake I have ever made. Big Red rates me against his memory of Gail's cake (thanks Gail, however I think the bar moves higher each year) and apparently this year it was a little drier than usual. I'll aim for a more moist cake next year.....   
 Just in case you are interested here is the recipe for Gail's Carrot Cake. 
 

Cake                                                                                                                   Topping

125 gms butter                                                                                           1 cup Icing Sugar

2 tsp cinnamon                                                                                          1 cup butter (softened)

1 sml tsp salt                                                                                               1 cup cream cheese

2 baking powder                                                                                        Dash of vanilla

1 tsp dissolved baking soda

225gm tin crushed pineapple

125gm chopped walnuts

2 heaped cups of grated carrot

4 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

2 heaped cups of sugar

2 heaped cups of flour

To Make the Cake

1.     Turn on your oven to 180 degrees Celcius.

2.     Grease and flour your cake tin.

3.     Mix all ingredients except flour and sugar

4.     Add flour and sugar and mix together

5.     Pour into the prepared tin and place in oven for 1 hour.

6.     Once cooked turn out onto a cake cooler 

To Make the Icing

1.     Soften butter

2.     Blend in Icing Sugar, Cream Cheese and Vanilla

3.     Spread lavishly over the cake and sprinkle with whatever you love (walnuts, toasted coconut flakes, cranberries, finely grated lemon or lime rind.