Finally, the Final Product

My apologies for how absent I've been. I used up all my brain cells tyring to pull the party together. It was a success, but at what cost? Well, we've finally made a full recovery. All the dishes are cleaned and returned to their rightful owners (I do a lot of borrowing for wide-range baking projects -- I'm still building my permanent collection), all the leftovers are long since eaten or thrown away, and pictures have been posted to their albums, for all to see.

Now, I still owe all of you ("all"--clearly, I am feeling optimistic) some photos and explanations of the rest of the project.

In order to not make this a monumental glut of text thrown at you in one piece, I'll just post some birthday pictures and the simple cakef in this one and make separate posts for the other steps of the project, the way they would have been if I had kept up with this. Enjoy!

The Birthday Girl!

The healthy cake for Iris to eat. This is a carrot cake, with only 1/2 cup of sugar in the whole thing, applesauce instead of oil. Pretty much the healthiest cake ever. I'll put the recipe at the end of the post.

Healthy Carrot Cake

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 cup white sugar

4 eggs

1/3 cups vegetable oil

3/4 cup applesauce

4 cups grated carrots

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9x13 inch pan. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Set aside.

In a large bowl, mix together the sugar and eggs until thick and pale. Stir in the oil and applesauce, then gradually mix in the sifted dry ingredients. Fold in the carrots (and 3/4 cup chopped nuts if you want them). Spread evenly into the prepared pan.

Bake for 40 to 45 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.

For the party, I baked it in a 10 inch cake pan with rippled edges, and dropped the remaining batter like cookies on a tray (baked about 10 minutes; they were delicious). I topped it with steamed apple slices seasoned with cinnamon, nutmeg, and just a pinch of sugar.