This weeks Tuesdays With Dorie recipe is Bill’s Big Carrot Cake chosen by Amanda of Slow Like Honey.

Initially I was going to skip the week’s entry. I already have a tried & true carrot cake recipe, which I don’t think I will ever change. It’s actually the first flavor I consistently received orders for, so I was skeptical to try another recipe.

But then I thought about when I joined TWD, my mission was to complete every challenge, every week – so I decided to participate.

To me the recipe is a very basic carrot cake recipe – so I had no problems putting it together. I decided to halve the recipe since I have a few other blogging events which I have to prep for this week. I also decided to make cupcakes i/o a cake.
The batter made 3 cups which would usually yield me 12 cupcakes using my ice cream scoop – but I only got 11? Mine didn’t sink as others did but the batter rose so much that they overflowed and made a chain link of muffin tops!

Other than that the cake was tasty, but a little fragile. I think I will stick with my current recipe.

For a printable version of the recipe click here.

Click here to check out the other Tuesdays with Dorie bakers.

Last Week: Marshmallows
Next Week: Fluted Polenta and Ricotta Cake

As many of you will come to know i love to bake. But i would rather make cucpcakes over a cake any day. Or i will make a small 6" cake and 12 cupcakes. I love making cupcakes - so you will notice that most of my posts to come will be in cupcake form.

These are my Red Velvet Cupcakes. Red Velvet seems to be all the rage these days, and is easily giving chocolate a run for its money as the most requested flavor at events and wedding. I have never tasted or made a red velvet cake before so i was not sure what to expect, everyone has such different and strong opinions on this cake. Is it a chocolate cake? Is it a buttermilk cake? Is it a buttermilk cake with a hint of chocolate? So many versions of this recipe out there each with its own "passed down" story to go with it.

I chose a recipe which was recommended to me by a friend. It comes from Sylvia's Soul Food Cookbook. The only change i made from the original recipe was that i increased the cocoa powder to 2 tbsp. The cake was a little dense and could have been moister but it was very tasty - it has a light chocolate taste in the background. I am tempted to make this cake without the food coloring and see if there is any difference in flavor and texture.

I topped it with a marshmallow cream cheese frosting which i made up as i went along. It was really good but a little too soft. I want to work on it but i dont even remember what i did so i guess i will have to start from scratch.

Since this is such a popular flavor I need to perfect it so that i can add it to my rotation. I will stick with this recipe as a base and tweak a few things to work on the denseness and dryness.

For printable recipe click here.