Children have a way of bringing me down to earth. Just when I thought I was top stuff making these carrot cupcakes for a child's birthday party recently, I quickly realised that cakes decorated in lollies and coloured icing rule. Iced confections in candy colours flew off the plate, while my carrot varieties were slow to find fans. Even then, one little girl ate half and left the rest on the plate!
Swirls of cream cheese icing on portion-controlled morsels of moist carrot cake, what's not to love?! Enticing for the kiddies and a nice option for the adults next to all the pink icing, or so I thought. Apparently pink icing holds its appeal through the ages.
Nevertheless, this was a nice recipe from the Australian Women's Weekly Afternoon Tea cookbook and the Mister and I rated the cakes highly. Yes, they did have poor street cred with the youngsters but that was more poor judgement on my part (and they were eaten eventually). The only trouble with the recipe, aside from it not being a unanimous hit with the kiddies and throning me king of the kids, was that it didn't make as many cakes as stipulated. It made up for that glitch with the tasty and visually appealing topping to be sprinkled over the icing (a simple mix of chopped pepitas, apricots and walnuts). Of course, squeezing a piping bag and making swirls of cream cheese icing made me infinitely happy and softened the blow of kiddie rejection. For the recipe, click here.
I also recently made the same mistake. I made a humingbird cake for my Mister, who was sharing the occasion of his August birthday with other extended family members ... (nieces)of the younger variety. Well all adults loved the cake ... and it's suffice to say a plain old chocolate cake would suit the pre-teens better. But the adults just took it as 'more for us then'!!! I'm sure yours were delicious and you enjoyed them!!!
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