I also made some classic Lenten biscuits, which are simple but ever so tasty crunchy little biscuits, packed with currants, mixed peel and sprinkled with a generous helping of caster sugar.
I have a great recipe for an american carrot cake from Leith's Baking Bible which I have made a few times and always goes down well. However, I thought I'd experiment a little this time and make a gluten free version. From what I have read about gluten free baking, cakes made without wheat need a little more liquid in the mixture and are likely to be more denser and crumbly than a cake with wheat. As carrot cake has a lot of moisture from the vegetable oil, brown sugar and carrots I thought this would be a good recipe to try using gluten free flour.
The resulting cake was still quite moist but a bit more crumbly than the normal version. I iced the cake using cream cheese sweetened with a little caster sugar as I didn't want it to be overly sweet and I find that adding icing sugar turns it into a sloppy mess! For the final touch I made little carrots out of marzipan to decorate- I knew these would sell the cake, and they did! I got some really good feedback so this is definetely a cake I will try baking again.
My first attempt at photographing the cake...
My friend Jo, a keen photographer gave me a hand with taking a few pictures of the cake, as this is something I really struggle with. She showed me how to make a 'mock studio' using large sheets of white cardboard as the background. The idea is that the light reflects off the paper onto the object you're photographing- I think! Anyway, this seemed to work and I'm quite happy with the photos, thanks Jo!
