Hello Kitty Carrot Cake

Hey lovely people! I know I've been a bit AWOL from the blog for quite a while but I'm really going to try and post all these ideas and recipes that I have floating around in my tiny little brain. So here goes!

Today's recipe is going to be Hello Kitty Carrot Cake! This is the first cake which I have made which has been of special importance and special request. It was my sister's 21st birthday and she requested this very cake (she's very particular, don't you know). So today I'm going to share with you how I attempted to make this happen for her!



( Well this is it, isn't she a beaut!)

To make the cake all you need is:

4 eggs
300ml vegetable oil
400g caster sugar
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
250g plain flour
2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
2 teaspoons of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon
350g grated carrots
125g chopped pecans

And then:

-Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and grease and flour a cake tin.
-In a large bowl, beat eggs, oil, sugar and vanilla. Mix in the flour, soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon.
-Stir in the carrots and fold in the pecans. Pour the mixture into a prepared cake tin.
-Bake for 40-50mins, or until an inserted skewer comes out clean. The cake will colour quite a bit (i.e. it will look a bit burnt) but don't panic, it will be fine but cover the top in tin foil if you are of a nervous disposition like me (haha cakes mean serious business to me).
-Leave the cake to cool completely before icing with some lovely lemony cream cheese frosting.

For the cream cheese frosting, I use the hummingbird bakery basic frosting and add lemon zest. You will need:

600g icing sugar
100g unsalted butter, at room temperature
250g cream cheese, cold
the zest of one un-waxed lemon

-beat the icing sugar and butter together in a mixer. Be careful with this bit, the icing sugar tends to go everywhere. I inhaled some when I did it, it was NOT pleasant.
-add the cream cheese and lemon zest and beat more until completely combined. Continue beating until you get some lovely light and fluffy frosting.
- cut your cake in half if you would like a two tier effect, otherwise just spread the icing on as desired.

To make hello kitty's face, this was the most difficult part for me, she looked a bit scary at one point when her face was lopsided but I soon rectified that. I just used shop bought fondant icing (ahhh the horror), drew a template and cut out the icing in the shape of her face and used some icing pens to draw on the detail and voila, hello kitty on a carrot cake, as per instructed! The cake was lovely and moist and went down very well with a celebratory glass of proseco. I hope you enjoyed this recipe and let me know if you gave it a go, I would love to see pictures also. Until next time, happy baking!

Rachael xx.