Citrus-y Carrot Cake

I have quite a few goodies from Christmas for cake baking, inspiration and design. This week I used Mich Turner's The Art of the Cake and my new flower cutters to make this 6-inch carrot cake.

I made the flowers using modelling paste made with fondant and tylose powder.

The design is piped on with royal icing and is the lace design from the book. I think that I made my royal icing too stiff as the design in the book looks softer and shinier. I also used a quick royal icing using water, meringue powder and icing sugar with a small whisk rather than using egg whites which may have also affected the consistency of the icing for pressure piping. I think that the overall effect is still lovely though.

The recipe for this very moist carrot cake with a hint of citrus is also from Mich Turner's book with one minor alteration in that I used toasted pecans instead of walnuts purely due to my taste preference. I am also not a fan of raisins but they are rum-soaked, so I thought I would give them a fair shot. The cake has the added moistness of a citrus-based syrup that is meant to be poured over the cake as soon as it is removed with the oven. I used the syrup as you would use a simple syrup and brushed it over my cooled cakes after levelling. The cake is iced with cream cheese frosting that I also spiked with a hint of orange extract.

Overall this was a great project to work on my flowers and my piping skills. This is also the first time I've ever made carrot cake. I will definitely be adding this cake flavour to my repertoire although I may omit the raisins - they remind me too much of fruit cake.