Happy kids and carrot cake

Bea1 once said to me that she had forgotten how it was like to be in my tummy. I thought it was the cutest thing to say, got carried away with that and didn't really say anything. Anyway it didn't sound like a question to me.

Then one day, on the way to send both bigger girls to school Bea2 asked how the baby in my tummy eat. Bea1 almost jumped at the question, and said she also wanted to know as she had forgotten how she ate when she was there.

Then, I reminded her about the umbilical(spelling?) cord..., (she's seen pics) and how the baby gets the food from me yada, yada, yada.

I also added, a mother's womb is the most comfortable place. The baby does not get hungry, the temperature is just nice, no need aircond, nobody to fight with (ok, maybe yes for twins;)), the baby won't get hurt, it's not that noisy in there, no need to go to the potty...yada, yada, yada!

She went "Wowwww....."

Then I asked "Would you like to come and stay in here again?"*pats tummy*. She almost shouted "NOOOOO....!"

"How about you?" (to Bea2)....She also went "Noooo..." with giggles!

I breathed my sigh of relief. That's an indication I'm raising happy kids.

Ok now the cake. The weekend passed without any baking done though I was all set for a carrot cake. Did it last night when kids all in bed.

I did a recipe from youtube, the first you get when you google "carrot cake recipe". I'm lazy to find the link. It's been around for over hundreds years, a family tradition, according to the chef. It's the easy peasy one. I'm sharing what I did here:

Mix all dry ingredients: 2 cups sugar, 2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 2 tsp baking soda, 2 tsp ground cinnamon, 1/2 tsp salt.

Add 2 tsp vanilla essence and 4 eggs. Mix again. Can only use hand and spoon.

Add 1 cup vege oil and 3 cups grated carrots. At this stage I found the mixture to be too runny, I knew I have different cup size. The recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups oil, I just added 1 cup only, and I added 1 more cup of flour.

The baking tin was prepared by spreading some oil at the bottom, and sprinkling some flour on top of it.

176 C (or 360F) for 30 minutes, accoding to the chef. Two tins side by side...nice! The chef comes out with 3 tins, me 2 so I was convinced measurement lari already. And he uses rounds one, but I think the volume (of the tin) is about the same.

Look closely to the right, some part are beginning to brown faster...arghhh!

People say do not open the oven when cake is cooking...but I did to rotate and switch the position of the tins, to get evenly distributed cooking and colour.

Finally after 40 minutes, and a few poking to make sure my cakes really done. Look at the edge, all brown and harder...urghhhh! It was 1.30 am anyway, and my warm bed was calling.

But I must finished that once and for all! For the icing, just mix 250g cream cheese (I use the expensive Philadelphia RM11.00), 250g butter (CSC or is it SCS RM8.50...ok, this recipe really ain't cheap!), 2 cups of icing sugar (but I used 11/2 cups of castor), 1 cup chopped walnuts (the chef uses pecan) and some vanilla essence. You can just use your mucsle to beat it but it's almost 2 am and I used a blender. Just a quick mix with the blender will do.

Finally, my messy carrot cake. The chef put the round cakes on top another, looks nicer that way, but I prefer to have them separately to cut into smaller pieces later on. Make sure the cake is really cooled before you smear the icing. That brought me to 2.30am. "yawn"

Carrot cakes ready to be shared with everyone!

One happy kid eating some carrot cake for breakfast this morning (she sulked a little though, knowing I bake without her 'help')!

And another!

As expected I got wide-eyed "You bake, too????" and "You have the time to bake????" in the office! One colleague already copied the recipe.

Overall, the cake was good. Everybody said they loved it, some prefer not to have it with the icing. I used to bake acrrot cake donkey years ago, and the normal ones are always with walnuts in the cake. Anyway, think the recipe is great, only thing is I need to figure out how to get the best result from my oven. I don't want to remove the edge of the cake anymore, and also there is some bigger holes in the last pic. Something must be wrong with the way I bake.

I still have leftover icing at home. Maybe I bake another one soon and try to improve.

Now, I'm off to fetch the happy kids from school and pass some of the goodie to the babysitter.