Birthday Cake

The Emergency Food Hotline received a call on Tuesday evening from a friend who lives nearby, who had decided to throw a birthday party for another friend. Trouble was that he didn't have a cake, which is where I came in. He wanted a "very special cake." There were a few clues (carrot, vanilla), but mostly I was on my own. Since moving across the country, I don't have most of my very favorite cookbooks on hand...they are hiding away in lonely boxes somewhere waiting for me to grab them up again (one day!).

So I looked up one of my favorite cake/icing combinations online, altered the recipe to suit my tastes, and here we have it: Ginger Carrot cake with Lemon Cream Cheese icing. It was quite moist, not too dense, and I added extra fresh ginger and a bit of minced dried apricot to brighten it up. Then I took a regular cream cheese icing recipe and added fresh lemon zest and juice, a tiny bit of vanilla, and there it was. It has a brightness that complimented the richness of the carrot well. Yum o'clock.