Father’s Day was last Sunday (September 6, 2020), so we made Daddy a special Father’s Day Carrot Cake. We doubled a variation of the Edmond’s carrot cake recipe (the version in my actual Edmond’s book is a bit different again) and made some cream cheese icing topped with the obligatory sprinkles.
Ingredients:
Carrot Cake:
300g butter, softened
rind of 1 lemon
1 cup of brown sugar
4 free range eggs
4 medium-small carrots, grated
2 cups of self raising flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
Cream Cheese Icing;
50g butter, softened
125g cream cheese
1 cup icing sugar
Instructions:
Carrot Cake:
Preheat the oven to 180°C (356°F).
Cream together butter, lemon rind and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the free range eggs one at a time. Grate the carrot using a food processor and place into a bowl. Stir in the other wet ingredients.
Sift self raising flour, cinnamon and nutmeg together and fold in wet ingredients.
Bake at 180°C (356°F) for 1 hour or until cake bounces back when touched. Allow to cool.
Cream Cheese Icing:
Place all ingredients together in a food processor and beat together until smooth. Spread over the top of the cake. Add sprinkles.
What the kids can do:
Hand washing: Don’t forget to get the kids (and grownups too of course) to wash their hands before you start. Little hands always seem to end up touching everything, including the ingredients. This is extra important given the current Covid-19 situation. For good 20 second hand wash, have them sing “happy birthday to me” twice.
Eggs: Pro tip for breaking eggs with a 5 year old, break eggs into a separate glass bowl before adding to your other ingredients. That way you can see and pick out any bits of shell before they are added in by mistake. I like to use free range eggs, because it is kinder to the chickens, and they also taste better. Bear in mind that raw eggs can carry Salmonella so wash little hands if they end up the raw egg. I also don’t recommend eating raw cake batter, just in case.
Mixing the ingredients: My daughter likes to help using the food processor to grate the carrot and mix all the ingredients. Bear in mind that little hands can fit down the shoot of the food processor, so always supervise this step.. The biggest messes seem to happen when sifting and mixing dry ingredients with the kids. A great tip from reader Dana M is to put a towel down underneath, which catches any stray ingredients for easy cleaning. When folding wet into dry ingredients, you want to mix thoroughly, but not too much or the cake will go flat. This usually requires the grown up to either finish off the mixing and/or intervene before things are mixed too much.
Icing the cake: Miss 5 spread the icing on the cake, I just tidied it up a bit. It was Miss 5 who insisted on, and liberally applied the sprinkles.
Keeping Them Occupied 