Love me some Wedding Cake

A dear friend of mine recently asked about my wedding cake.Or more accurately, the recipe for it. The wedding cake I baked for myself over 25 years ago! She remembered that it was a carrot cake and that it was pretty much the best carrot cake EVER! It made me think of again of that wedding cake from many moons ago.I believe the last time I baked that cake was about 6 years ago, for no reason other than as I said, it is a remarkable recipe--- even if you don't particularly like carrot cake! I initially used this recipe when I baked my own cake (and it would have made Martha proud!) for my home wedding for 75 people. Getting married at home I discovered is a great idea because it is smaller in scale, you don't have to deal with a lot of big scary details, and it is more intimate. It is also so much work you wonder on more than one occasion why you didn't go somewhere else and get on with it! I think it is kind of like having a birthday party for your kids in your living room after you have discovered the joy of taking their happy selves off to Chuck E Cheese or something! It took me two days to make that cake! We won't even discuss the time cleaning the house, decorating or the general catering. Regardless, it was really quite pretty, the cake itself was a carrot cake from a recipe that has remained one of my favorites over the years. It was frosted with a traditional sour cream frosting and piped simply with a frou frou tip of some sort and decorated with lovely fresh pink roses and ferns. I had purchased a kit to make the cake three tiered and carefully set to work installing platforms and dowels, a feat of engineering. Well, there is a reason that I am not an engineer because by the end of the evening that cake was beginning to list to the right! It still makes me smile that I baked my own cake and that everyone enjoyed it so much.

So with the bit of reminiscing over with, I set about to look for the recipe. I knew exactly where it was--- in my trusty old wooden recipe box, I can still see it; handwritten on a froofy old recipe card that was stained and dog eared. Filed under CAKES. Well, it wasn't there. Anywhere. I looked and re-looked because I am pretty famous for the inability to find something that is flat right under my nose! It seems that my ex-husband (whom I have discussed here before in all his mean glory) had removed my recipe marked "Wedding Carrot Cake"!!!! I suppose his tiny little pin brain could not think of me ever preparing that yummy cake recipe again. I knew he had pawed through my recipe collection before he returned it to mewith a set of boxes I paid dearly to ship. It arrived after my marital departure together with an opened box of tampons, outdated coupons, a collection of hotel shower caps and miscellaneous crap that he should be ashamed he had me pay for the freight company to handle. I knew that he had pilfered by recipes because not long after it arrived I was looking for another recipe and found it missing, it was my favorite shrimp curry recipe to be exact. At the time I thought him ridiculous but NOW I find his antics rude and idiotic. I can guarandangtee you that he did not prepare that recipe! Ack! Lucky for me I was able to ask my Aunt for the recipe, and bless her heart she still had her copy in even worse condition than mine had been. It gave me great, huge, humongous pleasure to write it down and file it away. Now, I'm sharing it with you dear Blitters!

Wedding Carrot Cake

2 1/2 cups finely grated carrot (I use the fine shredding attachment of the Cuisinart)
1 1/2 cups pecan pieces (don't buy the whole ones for this recipe)
1 cup canned shredded pineapple (drained with the excess liquid blotted off)
3/4 cup shredded coconut (I use the store brand, it is dryer than the premium brand)
2 cups all purpose flour (measure carefully)
2 teaspoons good quality cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon allspice
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups oil (I use canola)
4 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 cups sugar
Powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Prepare two 10 inch cake pans by lining with parchment paper, butter well and use powdered sugar to coat. Tap out excess sugar.

In the preheated oven, gently toast the pecans for about 5 or 6 minutes. Don't over-toast. Let them cool and then coarsely chop. Using a large mixing bowl combine the carrots, drained pineapple, and In a large mixing bowl, toss together the carrots, pecans, pineapple, and coconut with 1/2 cup of the flour. Make sure that everything is nicely coated with the flour.

Sift together the spices, salt, soda and last 1 ½ cups of flour in a sifter or through a mesh strainer.

If you have a stand mixer, use the whip attachment. Otherwise, try not to over-beat the dry ingredients. Mix the eggs and sugar until light yellow and fluffy and slowly add the oil. Fold in the combined dry ingredients. Add to the bowl with the carrot and pineapple mixture. Very gently combine and pour the batter evenly into prepared cake pans.

Bake the cakes about 1 to 1 ¼ hours, rotating once in the oven. Cool on a rack, turn out of the pans and remove the parchment paper.

Sour Cream Frosting:

• 2 ½ cups of powdered sugar
• ½ cup sour cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• Pinch of salt

Beat all ingredients on low until combined and then at high speed until light and fluffy.

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Seussing? I am almost done. I've begged and pleaded until a computerly techie friend will see if there is a way to finalize the Outlook work to be done. I'm ready to move on to other projects. This whole thing has exhausted me and made me lose my sunny disposition for sure!

No knitting has happened, again----- and although my head is spinning I do have hopes that I'll reacquaint myself with needles later this evening. Because I have acquired some distance from Cable Luxe, I'm suddenly a bit worried about my decision to leave out that single column of knit stitches among the sea of purls between the cables. I thought it was simpler/dressier without that element and yet....... I hate it when I second guess myself but it does leave me with the choice of forging ahead with my first plan or frogging the whole thing back and starting again, this time inserting that knit stitch. I know I could drop the stitch down all the way to the beginning and hook it back up as a knit stitch but that sounds less than exciting at the moment.

Next Monday evening finds me at the local B&N for Kate Jacob's "Friday Night Knitting Club" book reading. I do love to hang around a flock of knitters and am looking forward to it. That of course means to get together a new bunch of biz cards with my new banner/logo! The new ones are not Moo's----although I do love their tiny sweetness----- these are just regularly sized biz cards. I can't wait to pick them up from the lab, Starbucks is on the way and as we know it is pretty much impossible to drive right on by!

No wedding to work tomorrow, no brides to wrangle. I'll just have to make a wedding cake right here in my very own kitchen and have a slice in my jammies. Good thing I have a great recipe!

Happy Friday! Now---- anybody have a recipe for Shrimp Curry?