Food!: Carrot Walnut Grape Cake

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Carrot Walnut Grape Cake

I have been waiting to try out a carrot cake in the new oven. It was the first thing I'd tried in the convection microwave and I now I wanted to try it out in my new oven.

While I was waiting for Guru to come with the TV, I started with the irritating part—grating two and a half cups of carrots...

That done, I was smiling and measuring out the walnuts after breaking them into wee little bits.... (a heaped cup)

Then a teaspoon of baking powder went into two and a half cups of atta (whole wheat)...

... and a cup of brown sugar (dark brown not demerara... about 200gm) was kept aside...

...since I could not lay my hand on sour cream, I whipped some sour dahi (yoghurt) to make the cake a bit moister...

The walnut bits and the flour got whisked and thoroughly mixed...

...while I lightly greased and floured the sides of the baking tins and papered the bottoms...

I used two tins (one spring-form) and realized that I need to buy another spring-form tin for cases like this where I want to bake layer cakes...

Next, I cracked four eggs into the mixing bowl and started whisking them...

I added the dahi and half a cup of cooking oil as well (since I did not want to add butter and make it too rich...)

I creamed in the sugar next ...

Soon the mix was nice and frothy and the brown sugar had started working it's effect...

I added the grated carrot—and the twist in the tail—the squashed grapes...

The walnut and flour went in next...

... and into the tin...

The baking took 45min ...

Once the cakes cooled, I whipped together 150gm of cream cheese and added a little less than half a cup of icing sugar and knob of melted butter for the frosting.

I slathered on a generous helping on the bottom layer...