A hot mess

I asked Chris what he wanted for his birthday dinner this year and he said 1. Lasagna and 2. Carrot cake. Sounds simple enough.

Wanting to impress him I decided to make a layer carrot cake. Layered! Dummy. My neighbor, Amy (the friend who bakes) kindly loaned me her round cake pans since I don't own any (for obvious reasons) and I went to work. So I am going along and I have the parchment paper buttered and floured in the cake pans which are also buttered and floured, I go to put the batter in and I am not paying attention to how full these pans are getting (as you will see). In the oven they go. Now, it's President's Day and I am off work doing laundry...baking this cake..blah.blah..blah. After about oh, 15 minutes I start to notice a burned food smell coming from the kitchen. I am thinking that maybe something is burning on the bottom of the oven from before. I open the oven door, smoke POURS out and here is what I see:

Let me explain what you are looking at here - we have our 2 cake pans on the top rack which have (and are currently as I snap this picture) overflowing down both racks and ultimately pooling in a big burning mess on the bottom of the stove and the oven element.

Nice.

I don't have enough ingredients to make this cake again so I make the executive decision to put a sheet pan under the mess and keep em' baking. Figuring that I can clean the oven later and hopefully the cake that stays in the pan will bake up fine and can be frosted and salvaged into a birthday cake.

The cakes finished baking, I cleaned the oven (well, scraped all the burned cake out) and cooled them. I had to do a bit of creative carving to get the cakes to release from the pans because they were essentially baked around the edge of the pans but I got them out and cooled. Here is what a frosted hot mess looks like:

Not the prettiest cake in the land, but it was good. I am proud of myself that I pulled it off and didn't panic.

Mmmmmm, cake.

Hot Mess Carrot Cake (as adapted from Food and Wine as adapted from Maria)

1 cup pecans
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1 cup vegetable oil
½ cup buttermilk
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 lb carrots, peeled and coarsely grated
2 tbl fresh grated ginger

1. Preheat oven to 325. Butter two 9-in cake pans, line bottom with parchment. Butter the paper and flour the pans.
2. Make the cake: Spread the pecans on a baking sheet and toast for 8 minutes. Cool and finely chop. I used a food processor.
3. In a bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. In a small bowl, whisk the oil, buttermilk vanilla and ginger.
4. In a mixer, beat the eggs and sugar at high speed until pale, 5 minutes. Beat in the liquid ingredients. Beat in the dry ingredients just until moistened. Stir in the carrots and pecans. Divide the batter between the pans (uh, but do not over fill) and bake the cakes for 55 to 1 hour until springy and golden. Let the cakes cool on a rack for 30 minutes, then unmold them and let them cool completely on the racks.

Frosting
2 Sticks unsalted butter softened
2 8oz packages of cream cheese
1 tbl vanilla
2 cups powdered sugar

In a mixer, beat the butter and cream cheese at high speed until light, about 5 minutes. Beat in the vanilla, then the powdered sugar. Beat at low speed until incorporated. Increase the speed to high and beat until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.

Frost the cake.