Birthday Flower

I kept watering this struggling gerbera daisy on my balcony, hoping that it would flower again, and finally it did, reminding me that it has been one year since I received the plant as a birthday gift. Time sure does fly!



My coworkers did some serious damage to the carrot cakes I made for today, but there were still a few chunks left at the end of the day. I would normally have added pineapple and shredded coconut, and skipped the frosting, but I simplified my approach to emphasize the carrots instead. And by also using Philadephia cream cheese in the frosting, I felt like I was giving my colleagues, almost all of whom are French, the purest taste of Real American Food. The recipe I finally chose was from the Martha Stewart website. It was softer and and had a finer texture than the one I made last year (Mother Berta's from Epicurious.com) and I was attracted by the use of fresh ginger. It's October, time to think orange, and I see some ginger-spice sweet potatoes in my future...

The carrot cake recipe is here. The only change I made was to substitute golden raisins for toasted pecans. Also, I didn't have 8-in round pans, so I ended up with one tube cake and one loaf-shaped cake. This is because I bake everything in the pans given to me out of the surplus of a coworker. In fact I'm not too cheap to buy pans, it's just that I have a ton of that stuff back in the US already, and it seems like a waste to buy more and more of the same when there many other beautiful and interesting kitchen items to make room for.

For the frosting, I combined a 200g package of cream cheese with 50g unsalted butter, both at room temperature, stirring with a whisk until they were creamy and homogeneous. Then I added a teaspoon (5mL) of vanilla extract and 2 cups (240g) of confectioner's sugar (sucre glace ou à saupoudrer). The frosting was a bit thin, so I put it in the fridge to firm up for about 10 minutes. Some recipes call for adding more sugar, but I didn't want to go that route. Due to my history of bringing in peanut butter blossom cookies and caramel swirl brownies, my colleagues start to get toothaches just from looking at my desserts, so I try to hold back on adding sugar, when I can.

I had some chopped toasted walnuts to sprinkle on top of the cake, but I forgot about them, in my extreme excitement.

When I bake in my "petit four", I always set the temperature 10 degrees (Celsius) hotter than specified in the recipe and I turn the pan half-way through the baking time, then again three quarters of the way through. Then I keep an eye on the browning towards the end in order to turn everything frequently enough to keep it even. I've learned one thing from unfortunate experience: never ever reach into a hot toaster oven bare-handed, even if you think you can keep from touching the top heating elements! Metal tongs are good to have for manipulating little ramekins, and may save you from charred knuckles!