Gluten Free Carrot Cake

That thing I expected to be a complete flop...

I'll be honest, I didn't expect this to work. A few of my coworker's are gluten free. One of them happened to have a birthday over the weekend so if I was asked if I wanted to bring a cake. Her only request was something with cream cheese frosting. Of course I said yes and then immediately got nervous. I've made other GF baked goods in the past, but cake is cake... and no one wants to ruin cake. Plus, the texture of a cake is the most important part... and the texture is usually the part that's slightly off in most GF recipes. At least for me. This recipe? I fed it to James as carrot cake is one of his favorites (and he's my poor guinea pig) and he loved it. You can barely tell a difference. Success!

I will say, mine was a bit tricky to get out of the pan. I just made it as a sheet cake and I had a bit of trouble removing the first piece... it came out like this:

Not the prettiest piece of cake, but the taste was still delicious. I refrigerated it overnight and it held together today when we devoured it at lunch! If you're gluten-free and love carrot cake, make this. Now. But don't grate the carrots by hand. I tried that and 3 cups of grated carrots is a LOT. Hence this cake didn't get finished until almost 11pm. 

Ingredients:

Cake:

-2C sugar *

-4 eggs

-1 1/2 C veg. oil* 

-2C all purpose GF flour mix*

-2tsp baking soda

-2tsp baking powder*

-2tsp cinnamon

-1tsp salt

-2tsp vanilla extract

-1C chopped nuts*

-3C grated or shredded carrots

Cream Cheese Frosting:

-4tbsp unsalted butter

-3oz cream cheese

-1tsp vanilla extract

-2 1/2C powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease cake pan (two round 9" pans, or one 9x13") or muffin cups if making cupcakes. 

Cream sugar & eggs together, then add oil & vanilla and mix until smooth.  While that's mixing, combine dry ingredients except carrots & nuts into a bowl and mix together. Slowly add dry ingredients to mixing bowl and continue beating until blended smooth.

Stir in nuts & carrots and pour into cake pans. Bake for 35-45 minutes rotating pan halfway through. Original recipe says 45-55, but I did 40 minutes and it was slightly overdone around the edges and on top. 

While cake is cooling cream butter, cream cheese & vanilla together in mixing bowl until smooth. Slowly and powdered sugar and beat until creamy. Add more cream cheese or powdered sugar until desired taste is achieved. This is a very mild cream cheese frosting which I loved as I'm not a huge fan of the tanginess of cream cheese. If you like really tangy cream cheese frosting you may want to add a bit more. James loves CC frosting though and licked both the beaters clean, so it was definitely a winner. I have to admit that even though I've always preferred buttercream, this was for sure one of the best tasting frostings I've made!

***

The ingredients listed are the amounts used in the original recipe. I made some slight changes, but I'm sure it'd be fine either way. I used just under 2C sugar as many reviews stated that the cake was too sweet. I didn't even know that was possible, but whatever. Some reviews also said the cake was too oily, so again I did just under 1 1/2C oil. It was plenty moist, but not at all oily. King Arthur's All Purpose baking mix worked great as the flour. It does NOT contain xanthum gum or guar gum though so I did add 1tsp of xanthum gum. Check to see if the mix you're using already contains one of those - if not you will need to add it. Also, I didn't know this until I started baking some GF things, but not all baking powder is gluten free. Check your labels! They all contain something to help absorb moisture and some contain wheat starch, though most use corn starch. If you can't find a gluten free baking powder you can make your own using this simple recipe here.

*Original recipe for this cake was found here.

Linked up with Gluten Free Yummy

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It's Friday again! As always, I'm linking up with Lauren.

1. I was back out at the farm this past weekend. I went out there one evening after meeting up with my fam for dinner and realized I was just wearing sandals so I slipped on my super stylish rain boots from Target. I secretly love them and want a million more pairs of fun rain boots. 

2. This just made me laugh. It's a horrible picture that you can't really see, but this balloon is from James' bday in May and its been sitting in our dining room ever since. The other night Winnie just came walking into the living room with it & plopped it down on her bed. For some reason I found it hilarious. But, I pretty much think anything Winnie does is hilarious... and perfect. Maybe I'm biased. 

3. Saw this movie for a steal at Food Lion. I was *almost* tempted to spend the $4.99 and pop it in for entertainment's sake. Instead I didn't and know I'll probably always wonder why the (mega)shark is eating a plane. Or really, why the shark and octopus are fighting in the first place. And how on earth someone could/would actually make a movie about it.

4. We went on a mid-week date to the NC Seafood Restaurant at the Farmer's Market. O.M.G. If you live here, you need to go. I got the popcorn shrimp & James got the flounder. Both were excellent and enough food to feed a small army. And the hush puppies... oh dear.

5. This pretty much sums up where I am in life right now. This year is my 'golden' birthday - I'll turn 28 on the 28th and I'm having a little bit of anxiety about officially crossing over into my late twenties. Ick.

And here's a bonus:

Winnie helped me fill water troughs... by climbing in them. In case you haven't figured it out I'm crazy about this dog and no week is complete without way too many pictures of her doing her happy, dumb retriever things. 

The weather here is supposed to be awful this weekend. Thanks, tropical storm. I don't mind though because I'm on call all day Saturday and working until 1pm Sunday. I'm planning to catch up on the 1 billion loads of laundry I have and then bake something gluten free for a coworker's birthday. 

Hope you have a great (& hopefully more exciting!) weekend! :)

One Month!

Today my blog turned one month old! Yay! I made it through the first month... that's gotta be the hardest part, right?!?  

Via google images

I've learned so much in this first month - here's a quick recap:

-I had to change my comments setting because I originally had my blog set to allow comments from Google+. Thanks to one blogger I learned that only my Google+ followers could comment on my blog.

-Brooke pointed out to me that I was a no-reply blogger. This post that I actually just stumbled upon today showed me how to fix that.

-In Brooke's comment she offered to help me fix that and I replied to her comment on my page. I also learned today that unless she checked back she didn't see that reply. Apparently you have to reply to the email you get about someone's comment rather than on your page or else they won't see it unless they keep checking back. 

And here are some goals I have for this blog:

-I just added Bloglovin - I should probably learn how to use it.

-Same with Google+. I've looked around on there before but don't really feel comfortable on there yet.

-Make a Facebook page for my blog. I've been debating about this, but its a quick & easy way to share posts with friends who don't have a blog, but also make it so all my fb friends don't have to read about blog posts. Plus pretty much any post I read with tips on blogging suggests having a Facebook page!

-Get better pictures. Most of the pictures I've used on here so far were taken long before I started this blog so they weren't taken with the intention of posting on here.

So, there ya have it. Just a few things I've learned and a few goals I have. Thank you to all who have given my tips and suggestions - keep em coming! I've really been enjoying this so far and love having a place to share & connect with others. I look forward to continuing to learn - maybe one day I'll figure this whole thing out ;)

'My' Cakes

As far back as I can remember I've always had my two favorite cakes. I'm not sure when or why they became my favorites, but they are. It's not that I've never had a better tasting cake, it's just that at the end of the day I would choose one of these cakes over anything else. 

The 6 layer chocolate cake. This is not actually a chocolate cake. It's a white cake with chocolate icing topped with chopped pecans. The cake part of it is a little bit dry, the icing is a little bit fudgy, and chopped pecans make everything perfect. We always have this cake when we go down to Florida where my mom's family is. My grandmother used to make it for us and after she got sick, Bert took over making it for us - and still makes it anytime we're there. Bert took care of both my great grandparents and after they passed away she took care of my grandparents. When my mom used to fly down to visit my grandmother Bert often sent her back with cake in her suitcase. It travels very well! 

I've always said that when I get married I don't care what the wedding cake is, I want one of these just for me. Everyone else can eat funfetti cake, I don't care, I just want this. My love for this cake is partially its taste, but largely sentimental I think. It just reminds me of Florida and my grandparents. We used to eat it for breakfast, lunch & dinner. I especially remember at night taking a giant piece back to the den and watching TV until I could barely stay awake (usually somewhere around 9pm for me!). My mom and I were also infamous for just 'evening out' the edges - constantly cutting tiny slivers to make the edges 'even' rather than actually cutting full slices. That way there are no calories, obviously. It also goes amazingly well with a cold diet coke in a can. I love diet coke in all forms, but its best from a freshly opened can. And when accompanied by a hearty slice of this cake. Maybe the 'diet' in the coke cancels out some of the calories in the cake. Maybe.

Source: Google images

German Chocolate Cake. My other all time favorite. I love this in all forms - cake, brownies, cupcakes. I don't care, I just love it. I especially love the coconut/goo part. I hate when people put chocolate icing on it - just add more goo! When I was younger I used to have ice cream cakes on my birthday every year, but now I always have this. My mom usually makes it for me and I look forward to it all year. For some reason I don't really ever have it throughout the year. Although, I did just see that Red Robin has some sort of German Chocolate brownie dessert that I might have to try.

I've never baked either of these. I honestly don't know if I have a desire to either. These are cakes that I like to be made for me. How bratty does that sentence sound? But it's true. I feel like they would lose some of their appeal if I made them. I'm planning a post about some of the desserts I plan on making to enjoy during my birthday month and I debated adding these on there but quickly decided that I'm happier leaving these to other people. I will probably make them one day, but for now I'll just stay bratty and leave the baking to other people & the eating to me :)

Do you have any food like this in your life? Are you as bratty about it as me? Maybe I'm the only one... and I'm okay with that ;)

Deep Dish Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie - Healthy!

You'll Never Guess What This is Made of...

Have you guys heard of Chocolate Covered Katie? If not, you should go check out her blog right now. It's filled with tons of healthy dessert recipes. I posted already about my love for chocolate chip cookies here so when I stumbled across her recipe for a deep dish chocolate chip cookie pie that was healthy I knew I had to try it. To be honest, I really just tried it as an experiment and to see if anyone would be able to guess what it was made of. For the record, no one did. 

I only have a small 3 C mini food processor so it took way longer than it should have, I wouldn't really recommend trying this unless you have a better food processor than me! I had to make this in several small batches of 'dough' and then combine it all so it was kind of a pain - way more trouble than I'm willing to go through for a cookie. With a larger/better food processor though I think it would be fairly simply and definitely worth a try. It would probably turn out even better than mine did.

Anyway, enough chatting and onto the recipe.

Look at her pictures, they're way better!

Ingredients:

-2 cans white or garbanzo beans - drain & rinse (500g)

-1 C quick oats (I used gluten free ones)

-1/4 C unsweetened applesauce

-3 tbsp oil

-2 tsp vanilla extract

-1/2 tsp baking soda

-2 tsp baking powder

-1/2 tsp salt

-1 1/2 C brown sugar

-1 C chocolate chips (or more! ;))

Preheat oven to 350F. Dump everything but chocolate chips into a *good* food processor (that also happens to be large enough to hold everything!) and blend well. Then just mix in chocolate chips & pour into greased pan - I just used a 9' round cake pan, but a springform pan would probably be preferable. Bake for 35-40 minutes and let sit before serving.

Eat & Enjoy - and share with others to see if they guess what it's made of! I did sneak 1tbsp butter into mine just because I had to. I did 2 tbsp oil and 1 tbsp butter. I can't help it, I love butter and just had to throw some in. I'm sure it'd be just as good (and even healthier) without the butter. 

**Original recipe post here

Easy Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

Chocolate Chip cookies are one of my favorite things. Ever. However, as I've discussed on here numerous times, I'm lazy. Making individual cookies just seems like too much work to me when you can just make cookie bars instead. Plus I got a pan for my birthday one year that has the insert that just forms a bunch of squares so I don't even have to cut anything into bars. Easy made easier, just the way I like it ;)

Anyway, my brother was in town recently so my parents were hosting a family dinner and I, being lazy, had nothing planned to bring for dessert. I also took an afternoon nap that may have lasted a bit too long. I woke up with about 45 minutes before I needed to leave the house. I have a cookie bar recipe that I've used a few times in the past and like, but it takes too long and I didn't have all the ingredients for it so I consulted my friend google and came across this recipe. It seemed easy, used only a few ingredients and would fit into my time frame. Done.

All you have to do is melt some butter, cream it with some sugar & eggs, and throw in your dry ingredients. The recipe calls for 1 egg and 1 yolk, but I was in a hurry and didn't feel like separating an egg so I just threw in 2 eggs. It also says to fold in dry ingredients with a spatula, but again, no time for that. I just dumped in my dry ingredients and let them get stirred in until they were just mixed in. 

I did, however fold in my chocolate chips with a rubber spatula so I guess that counts as following directions, right? Original recipe called for 2 cups of chocolate chips. I just had a bag of mini chips in the pantry and dumped what was left in. I have no idea how much it was, but like always, I think I could've used more... there's always room for more chocolate ;)

Finally I just poured it into my heavily greased pan with the also heavily greased insert. If you don't have one of these, you should probably get one. I use mine all the time. I also opted to top 1/2 the bars with chopped pecans - if anything makes cookies better, it's pecans :)

Then I just popped it in the oven for 20-25 minutes rotating halfway and voila, cookie bars!  These were simply & delicious. I've been on a quest for the Best chocolate chip cookie - you know, the ones that are gooey, chocolatey & oh so buttery all at the same time?!? These weren't quite that for me, but they were delicious. What wasn't gone at dinner was quickly eaten for breakfast this morning. And the fact that these were ridiculously easy and used ingredients you probably always have in your pantry definitely makes them a winner in my book.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

-2 cups + 2 Tbsp. all-purpose flour

-1/2 tspn salt

-1/2 tspn baking soda

-1 1/2 sticks butter - melted and slightly cooled

-1 cup light brown sugar

-1/2 cup granulated sugar

-1 lg egg & 1 lg egg yolk (again, I just used 2 eggs)

-2 tspn vanilla extract

-1 1/2 cups chocolate chips 

-chopped pecans or whatever else you want to add :)

Preheat oven to 325F. Grease pan & set aside. Melt butter - while butter is melting sift flour, salt & baking soda together. In mixing bowl combine melted butter & sugars until well mixed. Then add eggs and vanilla.  Once that is well mixed fold in flour mixture - again, I just dumped it in to the KitchenAid with everything else, just be careful not to over mix. Fold in chocolate chips and pour into pan. Bake 20-25 minutes, rotating halfway. Let cool, then eat and enjoy! 

June!

My Birthday Month

It's June, finally! In our house we try to do 'birthday weeks' where every day during your birthday week is all about the birthday boy/girl. They choose dinner, get small gifts through the week, don't have to feed the dogs/do dishes, etc. James' birthday was in the beginning of May and he felt he didn't get to take full advantage of 'his' week. I can't really disagree since I didn't have much planned and he was working late most of the week. Because of that, he decided that he should get to spread his week out over the course of the month. This meant that several times over the month of May I had to hear "But it's my birthday month, I don't want to feed the dogs" or my dinner choices were trumped by his since it was his birthday month. Well, guess what? It's June - MY birthday month. AKA time for payback. 

Last year was the first year for me that my birthday really brought with it the sting of getting older. This year is worse. I'm edging dangerously close to the big 3-0 (sorry to all those who are 30+, I know its not really that old but it sure feels that way sometimes!). So, to soften the blow of getting older I plan on filling my month with all of my favorite things. 

So, I want June to be filled with the following:

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Chocolate. One of the sweetest things in life. This month will be filled with recipes that make good use of chocolate. Because really, those are the best kinds of recipes anyway.

Tons of barn time with Winnie. We have the best time out there and she sleeps for days when we get home. Everyone wins ;)

The beach. I will make it to the beach this month. Even if its just for a day. Craving some beach time majorly. Plus I'm in desperate need of some sun! 

Happy June, everyone. It just so happens to be one of my favorite months (not that I'm biased or anything) and I hope it turns out to be a great month for you, too!

Coming soon: Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars. One of my favorite desserts. I stumbled across a ridiculously fast & easy recipe for them last week - will share tomorrow :)