today is wedding anniversary day. 8  years ago i walked down the aisle of a church and said- i do and then burst out laughing. god didn't strike me down with lightning and the church didn't catch on fire. i would still say i do again. jon rules. so i know the husband likes carrot cake. i decided to surprise him with carrot cake. now i have never in my life made a carrot cake. i've eaten a few but never actually cooked one. good god. i spent about 2 days tracking down a recipes that sounded do able. i didn't follow the recipe exactly, this is what i ended up doing

carrot cake with cream cheese glaze
2 1/2 cups flour
12 oz carrot
1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon all spice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/3cup white sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
3 eggs
6oz plain yogurt
6oz veg oil

how in the hell do you get 6oz of a liquid- look on the side of your Pyrex measuring jug- should be cups and oz, unless you have a uk made one- then you're screwed. 6oz equals 3/4 cup.

i mixed the flour, baking powder and baking soda with the all spice and cinnamon in a bowl and set aside. in my largest bowl i grated up '12oz' of carrots, basically i took 6 medium sized carrots and just grated those. to the carrot bowl i added my flour combination. i stired everything with a wooden spoon.
in yet another bowl i creamed- with my little electric handmixer, the white and brown sugar with the eggs. then i added the yogurt, and gave it another quick mix. now the tricky part- you want to slowly add the oil while the mixer is running. when you do this it forms an emulsion and the oil is less likely to separate out.
now add the sugar/egg/oil/yogurt mix to the carrot/flour mix. i added about half the wet mix at a time. you want to use a wooden spoon to stir the two together. once everything is in the same bowl all mixed up nicely i bumped it out into a 9x13" sheetpan that i lined with greaseproof/ parchement paper whatever you want to call it. i put it in the oven at 350degrees to cook. it was in there about 40min. not sure how long yours will take to cook, i have an electric convection oven= cooks quicker. at 40min it was browning nicely. i turned it down to 325degrees and cooked another 10min. i let the cake cool 10min in the pan and then i turned it out onto my cake rack to cool completely.

cream cheese glaze
1 package of cheap cream cheese at room temp
3oz of whatever butter type product you use, i use store brand marg
1 1/2 cups icing sugar- also known as confectioners sugar or powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

with the electric handmixer i beat the butter and creamcheese together then i added the vanilla. a 1/4 cup at a time i added the icing sugar and mixed well between addings. let sit in the fridge while the cake cools. what you get is a thinish paste which you then slater on the cake. i cut my cake in half so it had two layers. oh and you will have a ton of icing left over, i'm using the extra on some homemade cinnamon buns.

if you want a more traditional thick frosting use 2oz of butter and 2 cups of icing sugar. i think that will give you a thicker frosting. if you don't want left over frosting use half a pack of cream cheese and 1/2 the amount of the ingredients i did.

sunday. i usually have sundays off. my husband has plans to cook his own dinner tonight. he found a recipe for beef fajitas that he wants to try out. some men look at porn after their wives have crawled in to bed, mine reads old cookbooks. yesterday he found a book i picked up a few weeks ago at a charity shop for 25p- 'new mexico cook book, 175 recipes from the land of enchantment' it was published in 1990. i know he has a thing for tex/mex southwest US regional cooking.

recipe
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juice of two limes
2 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 cup cilantro
1 medium sized jalapeno seeded and minced
2 cloves garlic finely minced
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2lbs skirt steak or flank steak
2 med sized avocados, peeled and sliced
1 medium sized onion thinly sliced

mix the lime juice, oil, cilantro, jalapeno, garlic, cumin, salt and pepper in a bowl. marinate the steak in this mixture, cover and stick in the fridge for at least 8hrs. remove steak and cook with sliced onions. serve with sliced avocado and warm tortillias, and salsa. supposed to serve 6

well in this house we don't have to serve 6. only my husband will be eating the fajitas. so we'll play around with this recipe and let you know how it goes. amounts will be adjusted, things added and things subtracted.