A Year of Cakes: Let's Start with Carrots

The Year of Cakes is one of my goals in 2015: to bake at least one cake a month, complete with icing and decorations. By the end of it, I want to feel comfortable enough to create my own cake recipes. 

Mike and I have been drowning in carrots since our winter CSA started up last month. I love carrots; and I could eat these sweet, crunchy things everyday, with or without hummus. But there's just something about adding something so good for you to cake that's appealing to me. Let's call it having your veggies and eating your cake, too. (We don't have to call it that, don't worry.)

I've been wanting to make a carrot cake for a while now. Mike's parents had a delicious carrot cake at Thanksgiving, and I hadn't been able to shake the flavors of it. Now that I had the carrots, I just needed the recipe.

The goal of this year of making cakes is to get comfortable enough with making cakes that I can start experimenting with my own recipes and flavor combinations. But to start, I wanted to use a recipe of someone I've admired for a while: Izy from Top with Cinnamon. After a long search, I settled on her recipe for carrot cake, as posted on Design*Sponge. I won't paste the recipe here (I didn't stray from it this time), but I will say that I found I needed more frosting than her recipe makes (and Mike still complained that he wanted more between the layers). I also made the little carrots using regular old food dye and pastry bags. 

Part of this challenge for me is also in the decorating, so I went with the outer layer of toasted coconut along with the traditional carrots on top. I was surprised to find that the decorating/icing makes as much of a mess as the actual baking of the cake, but it was worth it. I spaced out the two enough that it didn't feel like I was washing dishes all day (even though I was).

In all, I think this mission is off to a great start! We took the cake over to our friends' house for a game night, and it was a real hit. I was a little worried right after I mixed the shredded carrots, which I shredded using a food processor, into the batter; they looked a little too thick and long. I thought they'd have a strange texture in the finished cake, but I needn't have worried! The carrots added a nice slight crunch in the cake, which balanced nicely with the chewy raisins sprinkled throughout. At first, the taste of the orange zest was distracting for me (perhaps because it's not a flavor I associate with carrot cake?), but it eventually grew on me. It brightened the cake and served as a nice foil to the spicy nutmeg and ginger flavors.

I would definitely make this cake again (and I will! I have so many raisins!). I might pull back on the orange zest next time, and definitely double (or triple) the icing recipe to make sure I have enough. I'd also probably change the ratio of cream cheese to powdered sugar in the icing; I prefer my icings less sweet and a little more savory for a carrot cake.

The cake is all gone now (my coworkers finished it off), but at least we have these Instagram shots to remember her by...

Follow along on Instagram using the hashtag #yearofcakes!

Made | Cinnamon rolls

I remember the first time it occurred to me that cinnamon rolls could be made from scratch. My sister, newly married, had just come to our family's Christmas dinner from my brother-in-law's family's Christmas morning. "His mom makes cinnamon rolls from scratch every year," she said. Even though I'm from the south, we weren't immune to canned biscuits on Christmas morning. Homemade cinnamon rolls sounded like a special tradition. 

I didn't wait for a Christmas morning with in-laws to start making cinnamon rolls. I made my first batch of homemade cinnamon rolls for a big brunch at a friend's house. Since then, any time more than four people are gathering for a weekend meal, I pull out The Weekend Baker and make a batch. When I started making these, I followed the recipe to a T, but since then I've loosened up a little and made it my own. I've also acquired a stand mixer since those early days, and these have gone from special occasion status to sweet tooth/craving status. Without having to knead it by hand, these are dangerously simple to make (though I am a little nostalgic for late nights kneading in the kitchen). 

The main change I've made for these is to brown the butter that gets topped with cinnamon and sugar and rolled up. I love the caramel flavor it adds to the cinnamon rolls (not to mention the way it makes my kitchen smell).

Getting yeasted dough to rise in the height of summer is no problem (sometimes it rises too quickly), but in the dead of winter—which, let's face it, is when you need a cinnamon roll the most—it can be a little trickier. Sometimes I preheat the oven to 100 degrees F while I'm making the dough, and turn it off a few minutes before the dough needs to sit and rise. Then I place the covered (metal or heat-safe glass) bowl into the toasty oven. Make sure you turn the oven off a few minutes before you place your dough in there so it can cool off to about 80 degrees F.

I like to smear the glaze on while the rolls are still a little warm, that way it melts just a bit and drips into the crevices and edges. 

Recipe after the jump. One thing: At first glance, this seems like a lot of work, and it is! There are plenty of steps and ingredients, and you can't wake up one morning and decide to have fresh cinnamon rolls an hour later. But if there's one thing I've learned from baking is to enjoy the process and appreciate each bite knowing every ingredient and bit of effort that went into the making of it. Treats like these aren't meant for everyday anyway, so I'm kind of grateful that it takes more than just a few minutes to throw together. 

These are great to make ahead of time before a big gathering. At the end of the recipe there are instructions on what you can do ahead; you can let the dough rise slowly in the fridge overnight before baking and serving, or you can cook them, cool them, and freeze for later, though I've never tried this. Nor do I know anyone who, in their right mind, would bake cinnamon rolls and not devour them right then and there. 

Made | Breakfast ice cream

If you know anything about me, know this: ice cream is my favorite food. Unfortunately, in my journey to becoming healthier (i.e., eating more whole foods and less refined sugar), I've had to cut back significantly on my ice cream intake. Don't worry about me, though: I got an ice cream maker last month, so I've been perfecting my coconut milk ice cream recipe using natural sweeteners like honey or pure maple syrup. This is all very necessary science in the face of a rapidly approaching summer.

Summers before, I've survived on frozen grapes, popsicles, iced coffee, and ice cream. Two summers ago I bought my first popsicle molds and proceeded to experiment with freezing Greek yogurt with berries stuffed in it. "We can eat these for breakfast!" I exclaimed to my sweaty roommates.

With my new ice cream maker, I decided to take it one step further: breakfast ice cream. OK, so technically it's breakfast frozen yogurt, but you get the idea. Everything in this recipe—including the name—is aimed at the goal of getting myself out of bed and an air conditioned room to go to work this summer. Don't worry about Mike, he has summers off so he can hide out in our room all day long. But I'm going to need to more desperate measures.

Full disclosure: It's currently in the 60s outside, so this is all just preparation for a sweltering summer that part of me is hoping will come. If it doesn't, then I'll just eat this because it's delicious rather than to keep my insides from catching on fire. Enough chit chat. Let's get to it.

For a simple breakfast ice cream, you'll need Greek yogurt. If you like plain Greek yogurt, then go for it! I opted for Trader Joe's (delicious) honey Greek yogurt. Grab some cheese cloth, a fine strainer, and a bowl.

Dump all that yogurt-y goodness in there. Finally! A use for that cheesecloth I bought a lot of months ago!

You're probably thinking, Isn't Greek yogurt already strained within an inch of its life? Yes, but there's still a lot of liquid left in that inch, so to be safe, let's just exercise our patience and put our yogurt in a strainer in the fridge for a few hours. You know that mysterious clear liquid that appears at the top of your yogurt a few days after you open it? That's what we're getting rid of. The two pound container of yogurt I bought strained out about 2/3 cup of liquid in the fridge over the course of five hours. Less liquid = less icy breakfast ice cream. 

After your yogurt is strained, freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions. It will freeze just like any other ice cream batter, though maybe a little bit faster. Add any mix-ins you want in the last five minutes of freezing. I added peanut butter and granola to mine to complete the breakfast theme. I scooped the frozen yogurt back into its original container and froze it overnight to harden.

When it came time to eat it, I added slivered almonds and sliced bananas with a side of coffee. Add some fresh pineapple, cherries, banana, cacao nibs, and you have yourself a breakfast banana split! The possibilities are endless here, folks. 

Made | Croissants!

Ever since I fell in love with baking, I've wanted to learn how to make a croissant. There's always been a reason I couldn't learn yet: I didn't have a stand mixer (turns out you don't need one at all); I didn't have bread flour; I didn't have the time. But like anything else, I just had to dive in and hope for the best. I've been really inspired by Janee's return to school—baking school—so this past weekend, I stopped putting it off and made my first successful batch of croissants.

The entire process takes about 20 hours, though luckily not all of that is hands on. Mike and I had plans to go see a movie on Saturday, but I talked him into getting a couple from Redbox instead so I could babysit my croissant dough. Dreams take sacrifice, right?

I used Julia Child's recipe (who else), as explained by Barbara Bakes. I recommend reading through the steps several times to get familiar with it. For instance, she links to this video in step 44, which told me that I had been folding the dough wrong the whole time. It turned out OK anyway, but it was a great reminder to be thorough in my prep next time.

The dough comes together really easily and almost immediately starts its first rise. I started it around 4 PM on Saturday, which put me through step 32 by midnight. Mike and I fell asleep on the couch and I had to set an alarm so I'd get up and do the last step before putting the dough in the fridge for the night. If you're not crazy for croissants, then this recipe might not be for you. By noon on Sunday, I had hot croissants fresh out of the oven.

It was definitely worth it, and I finally crossed something off my list of baking goals (that's a thing, right?), so I'd say it was a rainy weekend well spent.

Don't get me wrong, I had my share of problems while making these. On Sunday, after they'd been in the oven for 10 minutes (I kept peeking in to make sure I wasn't burning them), our smoke detector went off. We have one of those newer smoke detectors that don't just let off an ear-aching beep, they also speak to you: "Warning, fire." I'm always afraid our landlords (who live upstairs) will think I'm burning the place down, so I press the button until it finally shuts off. I must've pressed it one too many times because next thing I knew, the fire detector lady was saying, "Warning, carbon monoxide." Cue panic.

I'm one of those people who's scared by the labels on a can of spray paint (I once returned a can of spray chalk paint because of the explosion warnings on the bottle), so I threw open all the windows, turned a fan on, turned the oven off (and pulled the croissants out), then proceeded to sit on the back porch in my pajamas while reading the back of the smoke/carbon monoxide detector. After a little research and panicked texts to Mike, I realized that I had put the thing in test mode, and the carbon monoxide warning was a false alarm.

Luckily there were croissants waiting inside to comfort me.

 Look at those layers!

What have you been baking lately?

Made | Polenta with balsamic mushrooms and roasted asparagus

Have you heard of the blog Orangette? Molly Wizenberg is one of those writers who seems to have missed the memo about how the blogosphere is changing or selling out; in fact, she probably doesn't even know the word "blogosphere." (That's a compliment.) I love when she pops up on my blog reader because not only will there be something food-related, there will be a thoughtful story to read as well. It's one of those blogs that I open and save for some downtime with a coffee in my hand. It feels like I'm chatting with an old friend with nowhere else to be.

Because of that, and also because she and her husband own a successful restaurant in Seattle, I tend to trust her recipes a little more than the average food blog. So when I followed a link to an old post on polenta, I knew that was the recipe to use for my first delve into polenta.

I saved this recipe for a day when I'd be working from home, so I could start it a couple hours before we'd want to eat dinner. There's a lot of supervision needed for the non-quick cooking kind of polenta, but it wasn't more than I could do while working in the other room or readying the rest of dinner.

I'm originally from Georgia, so I've had my fair share of grits, and polenta is just a creamier version of that. For me, it's the ultimate comfort food—familiar and novel at the same time, down-home flavors found on upscale menus. I knew I wanted caramelized onions and mushrooms to go on top, and I used this Love and Lemons recipe as a jumping off point.

Molly does a great job of explaining how to cook the polenta, so I won't go into the details of that here. I had no problems even though it was my first time cooking the stuff, but I did take some pictures of the steps and included them. I will say that I just bought #120 yellow cornmeal at the grocery store from the grains aisle (rice, beans, bulgur, etc.). Whole Foods has Italian polenta in its bulk section that looks exactly the same as what I bought.

For the mushroom topping

1 medium yellow/red onion, sliced (I used half a leftover yellow onion and half a leftover red onion)
3 medium portabello mushroom caps, halved and sliced
2 cloves of garlic, diced
1.5–2 cups fresh spinach
splash of red wine (I used Trader Joe's shiraz)
couple splashes of balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp toasted pine nuts (optional)

Start by coating the bottom of a large pan with olive oil and place over medium heat. Sauté the onions until they start to brown and caramelize, then add the garlic. After a minute or so, add the mushrooms and lower the heat. Cook these together until the mushrooms have released all of their juices and cooked down (about 15–20 minutes). If it seems like they're burning, reduce the heat even more. You want this to cook slowly. When the mushrooms are cooked down, add a splash or two of red wine and let reduce. Add a couple handfuls of spinach and stir until wilted. Add the balsamic vinegar to deglaze the pan right before you're ready to serve, stir and remove from heat. Serve over polenta and top with toasted pine nuts.

I also served ours with roasted asparagus, (really simple) recipe found here.