Carrot Cake Catastrophe

It was probably a little ambitious to attempt making a cake when my little ones were both recovering from illness and I myself was feeling run down and exhausted. However, my new Cake Decorating Partwork issue 2 had arrived in the post and I was really keen to try one of the amazing looking recipes.

I chose a carrot cake with a cream cheese frosting, decorated with little carrots modelled out of marzipan.

Alarm bells should have rung when the recipe stated that it was 'very hard to go wrong'.

Mine went wrong!

I followed each step carefully but rather than producing a moist, light carrot cake, mine was stodgy and undercooked on the inside, overcooked on the outside.

I carried on regardless.

I didn't like the frosting at all. I only used half the amount recommended and still found it overpoweringly sickly. (Not sure what to do with the remaining half, which is now taking up space in my fridge, other than to throw it away)

The carrot decorations, though... they were fantastic! We used ready roll icing rather than marzipan which was a bit harder to use but still gave a reasonable result. I thoroughly enjoyed making my carrots and my little girl made her own versions too. (Hers, unfortunately, didn't make it onto the cake after she rolled the icing down her woolly jumper to get it into a sausage shape!)

The icing did go a little soft and sticky after all the shaping to get it to look carroty but they firmed up again nicely in the fridge. They looked great (if a little oversized!) on the disaster of a cake but after a while, the orange food colouring started leaching into the frosting. It was not pretty!

My kind guests tucked into portions of my Carrot Cake Catastrophe. Nobody asked for seconds!