Guest baker! Annika makes Hummingbird Bakery Brownies

I haven't been baking much recently, partly (and somewhat ironically) because I'm home a lot more and know I would end up eating most of the goodies myself. I did make this carrot cake with cream cheese icing for a departing Kiwi friend though...

And then, Annika came over and baked brownies with me! She looks surprised, but she wasn't really.

We used Hummingbird bakery's traditional brownie recipe, which you can find here. Simple yet effective.

It would probably be easier to cut if you waited for it to cool completely, but that takes a long time and we wanted to try some. We're very professional like that.

In case you can't read Annika's crazy eyes, they're saying, "This is amazing!"

Rich, moist, chocolatey goodness.

Carrot Cupcakes in Japan (aka. "ninja cake")

Sometimes what you need is a sea of carrot cupcakes in your kitchen. These ones were toasty brown, and just a little crisp on top - just the way I like them. You can find a link to the carrot cake recipe I use in a previous post --> here.

I'm pretty much a stickler for the recipe, but I've become a bit less concerned as I've done more baking. Approximately accurate is usually good enough (though it pays to be a little careful when it comes to rising agents ;). My cream cheese icing was about 85 grams of butter, a bit more of cream cheese, about 3 cups of icing sugar and a good shake of cinnamon, because I felt like it. And cinnamon is awesome.

The pale, uncoloured icing doesn't make for particularly spectacular photos, but in real life these looked pretty appealing. Carrot is ninjin in Japanese, but a slight translational error resulted in these being dubbed ninja cakes at our dinner party. (They do conceal three and a half carrots with a good deal of stealth.)

If you bake in a small oven and don't turn the cupcakes at the appropriate time you may end up with nicely slanted ones, like this. Not that you really notice much once the icing's on top (or with Anpanman and a penguin sitting on the table...).

Carrot cake - the smaller, gluten-free and dairy-free version

One thing I really like about baking is that you can start off with elements that look rather horrible (take, for instance, this bowl of oil, vanilla essence and eggs - slimy) and end up with something wonderfully un-horrible.

An aside: If you want to know the most effective way to crack an egg, check out this post over at Cupcake Project. Nerdy yet practical.

I made carrot cake back in February and rather enjoyed it. This time I used the same recipe but with gluten-free flour and dairy-free honey icing. I also decided that I didn't need a giant cake, so I halved the recipe and just made a single layer cake in a smaller tin (I guess about 8 inches, but estimating was never really my thing!).

The icing had a lovely, almost pearlescent sheen to it at first... but before long it got tricky on me and separated out rather badly. I think it was the combination of the honey with the Nuttelex. It still tasted fine, but if I was making the same cake again I would ice it JUST before serving so it didn't have a chance for mischief!

Carrot Cake

I didn't use up all of my cream cheese icing on the gingerbread cupcakes so felt the need to use it on something else. I figure the most obvious candidates for cream cheese topping are banana cake or carrot cake. It was with some horror, though, that I realised I didn't have a go-to carrot cake recipe at hand, and decided I must remedy that!

I don't know why I like photos of freshly grated stuff. Just do. It looks new, bright.... something.


Layer cake! I used a recipe for "Most Wonderful Carrot Cake" from justapinch and just added my own already-made icing (see previous post). The recipe said to use 9 inch pans, but my only matching set is 10 inches... and I've had too many experiences of unevenly sized cake layers, so 10 inches it was!

First layer "plastered."

And second layer on. Size matching success = win.

I opted not to ice around the sides because it tends to just get messy and drip everywhere any time I try that sort of thing. I also kind of like being able to see the middle layer of icing peeking out.


The recipe said it was "very important to serve this cake at room temperature." But, dear recipe, I must disagree with you. I had my first piece at room temperature, and then another piece the following day out of the fridge (it just doesn't feel right leaving cream cheese out in the heat to melt...) and I say the cold one was better. Awesome even. How I wish there was some left!