Hero Hostess Cooking Up Challenge

The Hero Hostesses in the Hero Arts Flickr group are hosting a Cooking Up Challenge. Each of us has cooked one of our favourite recipes and is sharing a project inspired by our cooking. I baked a carrot cake and gluten free carrot cake buns. Both recipes are at the bottom of the post.



I love carrot cake and my hubby loves it too but since he was diagnosed as a coeliac a few years ago I usually make the gluten free version. Sometimes gf baked goods like scones and pastry can taste quite dry, but because carrot cake is moist the gf version is as nice as the one using ordinary flour. Normally I’d never put both of these on the same plate in case some gluten got on the gf version but just did so for the photo – it meant an extra bun for me too! If you’d like to take part in the challenge the details are here. I’ll be sending a prize out to a winner picked by a random drawing. The prize will include the cookbook in the photo, "101 Cupcakes and Small Bakes", plus some other small goodies that I'll get when I’m shopping over the weekend.


Stamps (Hero Arts) – What’s Cooking, Envelope Pattern, Scallop Borders and Raindrop Background.

When I'm cooking, I usually sling on an apron which is mainly black and has touches of hot pink and white, so that's what inspired my projects. The recipe card is in the form of a card so that it will stand up when I’m baking. On one side there is the ordinary recipe and on the other the gf recipe. I paper pieced the bowl and whisk, added Glossy Accents, the cute Hero Arts heart pearls and lots of faux stitching. I came across a wonderful tutorial on making corner bookmarks here and have made lots of different ones - it's a great way of using up scraps. The apron, bowl and whisk are paper pieced and I added Glossy Accents to the bowl. The scallops and sentiment are embossed in white. I just added lots of faux stitching and the pearl hearts to finish.

I'm submitting these project to the Paper Piecing Challenge in the Moxie Fab World.

Carrot Cake

Ingredients
140 ml vegetable oil
2 eggs
200 g dark brown sugar
300 g grated carrots
100 g sultanas
50 g chopped walnuts
180 g self-raising flour
pinch of salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1tsp mixed spice
250g cream cheese
50 g butter
1 tsp lemon juice
275 g icing sugar
1. Beat the eggs then add the oil, brown sugar, grated carrot, sultanas and chopped nuts.
2. Sift the flour, spices and salt into the mixture. Mix well.
3. Pour the mixture into an oiled loaf tin and bake at 150C for approx 1 hour 5 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.
4. After taking it out of the oven allow it to cool for about 5 mins before removing from the tin. Cool on a wire rack.
5. Icing: beat the cream cheese and butter together in a bowl until well combined. Add the icing sugar and lemon juice. Mix until the icing is smooth and thick. Spread the icing over the cake.
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Gluten Free Carrot Cake Buns

Ingredients
4oz dark brown sugar
6oz grated carrots
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp cinnamon
¼ pint water
8oz gluten free self raising flour (I use Odlums Tritamyl)
6tbsp clear honey
6oz sultanas
3oz chopped walnuts
4oz margarine
2 eggs
7oz low fat cream cheese
1tsp lemon juice
1. In a saucepan mix together the sugar, carrots, spices, water, honey, sultanas, walnuts and margarine.
2. Bring to the boil and simmer for 5 mins. Pour into mixing bowl and leave to cool.
3. When the mixture is cold beat in the eggs and fold in the flour. Mix together well.
4. Put mixture into bun cases and bake at 180 C for approx 15 minutes (until the bun centres spring back up when lightly pressed).
5. Cool on wire rack.
6. Beat the cream cheese and lemon juice together and spread over tops of buns.
7. Top with a walnut.