Carrot Cake Craziness

Those of you who do not know me personally may find it shocking to find out that I can indeed cook, not just bake. And even more shocking...I can cook pretty well. I make one heck of a Sunday sauce, a mean meatball and lots of other creative concoctions. I haven't done too much cooking since school started since most of my time and energy is focused on baking, baking and more baking but since bathing suit season is like a week away here in Vegas (ok I am slightly exagerating) I decided I better start cooking. Andrew and I went off to Sam's Club and bought ginormous (GIGANTIC + ENORMOUS) packages of fresh chicken, apples, grapes, lettuce, etc...
...So where is this going? Well, we also bought a huuuuge bag of carrots...We ate them raw, dipped in dressing, in a salad, steamed, braised, you name it but at the end of two weeks we still had a ton of carrots left and frankly, I couldn't stand looking at them any more...so I thought...hmmm..I have never made a carrot cake before...and it would be fun to make little sugar carrots as deorations...and so the crazy carrot cake was born.


I searched for a recipe..I went to my trusted and true source for good solid recipes that I can always count on.
Simply Recipes has soo many awesome recipes that work perfectly so you know you can put your own twist on them without too much of a gamble! Okay so I found a great carrot cake recipe, and made some changes...and it was DEE-LISH!! I never really even knew I liked carrot cake! Soo Good!
The carrots made of sugar and chocolate were the REAL inspiration for this cake and they are super cute!

Choc-o-holic Triple Chocolate Cake

SERIOSLY this is a death by chocolate cake...This was an order for a 50Th birthday cake..I was told three things...
1. It needs to feed 20 people
2. He wants all chocolate
and 3. It needs to say "Happy Birthday Kevin"

Ummmm no other input? No requests for something crazy on top or a zillion sugar paste flowers or something absurd!!??
Well I can;t just make a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting...there is no fun in the cake JUST being delicious...it NEEDS a wow factor or at least some visual interest!! Hmmmm...

Well not only was I allowing my creative juices flow but I was trying to think of how to make a chocolate on chocolate cake without it tasting, monotonous.

So i got together my favorite chocolate cake recipe and a giant 10 inch by 3 inch deep cake pan and made a triple recipe. Thank GOODNESS I got a professional and giant kitchenaid (THANKS TONY!!). This is one DEELISH cake recipe, its so rich and moist it is ALMOST like a brownie...YUM But a rich cake needs some light filling and an even lighter frosting...So I made a chocolate mousse for the filling and a Chocolate Chantilly Cream (my version that I recently made up) and began stacking.
First a one inch layer of cake then chocolate mousse then cake then mousse then cake then the Chantilly cream (which is really almost just a chocolate whipped cream..but stabilized). I frosted the cake and it looked beautiful but not exciting. The mousse was yummy and not too sweet and the Chantilly was airy and amazingly good I wanted to eat the entire batch (and I saw Andrew eye-ing it in the distance which reminded me to WORK FAST!!

I made several double chocolate truffles and chocolate butterballs and let them set. Then I went to work on my chocolate cage...which really takes no time at all but you only get one shot to put that thing on the cake and one shot to do it right...nerve-racking!


This chocolate cage. (yes they are still cell phone pictures and Yes I need to take real pictures)

But! As you can see the cake was beautiful..no the cake was severely enticing! I really wish I was going to get a slice of this because #1 it is probably gorgeous when you slice it and more importantly #2 It must have tasted amazing because all the components were delicious separately so I seriously cant imagine how yummy it was.


So the cake was the easy part...finding a box big enough for this monster cake was not so easy ... Luckily I am part Pastry chef and part builder and was able to construct a box out of two of my very pretty cake boxes. Okay, not so beautiful but don't judge a book by its cover or should I say .. don't judge a cake from it's box!!






I later found out the guests thought it was gorgeous and my "boss" who ordered it through me insisted they let him know whether it tasted as good as it looks...the guests said "we will save you a piece" ...
WELL... It was apparently soo good they never did save him that piece!! And its that kind of response that makes me love what I do!!