Carrot Cake Challenge

This week, carrot cake. Why? well, at this Bar/Restaurant called Brooklyn, owned by this nice American-Born Chinese Wayne, you can get lots of yummy things just like back home. Pizza, pulled pork, paninis, etc, all pretty good. and Carrot Cake. The thing is, it's a bit on the pricey side for my teacher-budget, but I get it every now and then anyway, because it's yummy. Last week my friend said, 'that's how much? you could just make that yourself!' and i thought, yeah i could! so voila, the biggest success (in my opinion) since my chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, Banana Bread with walnuts and a "Cream cheese" icing.

the challenges:

pans to bake in
no nutmeg
cream cheese
good butter
a method for making the icing

the overcoming of the challenges:

Halved the recipe, tiny pans, only had one of them overflow!
no nutmeg but enough cinnamon, would be nice for next time though
Interesting substitution that worked well for cream cheese. Plain yogurt that is drained overnight in cheesecloth(i used coffee filters).
still no great butter, but my latest one is alright, compensate with a touch more vanilla (and i wouldn't have that or coffee filters without my gma lawell!!! thanks!!)
method. I was out shopping yesterday and TESCO (the British? version of Target or such) was carrying a new item. A FOOD PROCESSOR! OMG. now, it's tiny, capacity maybe 2 or 3 cups, and it sounds like it's going to break when I use it, but for the moment, I have a food processor!! with gentle use and care, I could be making icing and hummus etc for months!

Here's the final product, yumyumyum...




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In other news... My job is annoying because of the change of schedule, and they're making me do a class on Fridays which is one of my days off (the other being Monday). They told me this yesterday that this was a definite change, and so I said, "I'm sorry but you need to give me more notice than one day." which they didn't take well, but, not working today so woohoo! And they're trying to give me a hard time about paying me overtime, but hopefully when I bring in my contract all will be well.

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In other random news, here's a picture of the 4 of us that go swimming on a regular basis, Nick Scotland, Mikey Ireland, me, and Poly Cyrpus. This is how I differentiate people in my mind, first name and country of origin, or at least the place we met, last names are optional and later on...