Why, for the love of all that is orange, did my Silver Palate Carrot Cake totally fail tonight??

M

marilynfl

Moderator
I've lost count of how many times I've made this recipe. I even made enough for 320 servings at my niece's wedding. It has NEVER screwed me like this epic failure tonight.

Total collapse in the middle. Then the bottom of the cake stuck to the pan even though Epicurious said "grease" only. Then the larger layer bubbled up in the middle like Mt. Vesuvius and then collapsed like Trump's toupee.

Of course, I used up all my organic carrots and all my preserved fresh pineapple and almost all of my walnuts, so making it again isn't an option as I am to deliver "a dessert" tomorrow morning.

Fortunately there is a French apple pie in the oven already and cookie dough ready (and I've already baked some of those so I know they work) but the show stopper was going to be the carrot cake.

Is there anything I can make with lumps of cake? It tastes delicious (not overly baking soda'd so that wasn't the problem) .

I was thinking of a trifle (because what else do you do with lumps of cake), but wondered if cream cheese icing be too heavy? And it sure wouldn't look as pretty. (it's for a cake walk at a fundraiser for a mother with 3 kids and MS).

ugh....I hate when stuff like this happens.

PS: I just realized I didn't use MY paper copy of the recipe as it's buried in the basement along with hundreds of other recipes. I just used the first one I found online: Epicurious. I wonder if there is a difference?

 
I had that problem, at times, with the SP recipe

and I remember reading somewhere that, in part, it had to do with the heaviness of the pineapple and it's syrup (like when I didn't chop them enough or let too much syrup in.

I never knew when I'd created a beautiful cake or it would be a disaster. Recently switched recipes to one from a crafty class. No carrots but instead baby carrot puree. Texture and taste is divine. (although I'm tempted to add back some carrots of it's visual)

 
I've found that recipes that use oil frequently add too much...

making the cake dense and it tends to be dropped in the center.

I had this same problem with my oatmeal stout gingerbread until I greatly decreased the amount of oil. The first result was a cake that rose evenly and stayed there after cooling. The second result was a larger cake, since it now was freer to rise, it tended to overflow the called for pan size. I had to go to a larger pan.

I seem to remember having that same problem with the SP carrot cake recipe so I have moved on to other sources for that cake recipe.

 
Bugger all, I just realized I used 1 C grapeseed oil + 1/2 C SunCoco oil

(a blend of sunflower oil and coconut oil) when I have ALWAYS used corn oil. When isn't oil oil?? Could this be the problem? It definitely feels heavier.

This was an epic failure to the nth degree (really...a high school film student could have video'd this blob heaving in the oven and used it in a horror movie) but I'm making do with the results because I refuse to waste this qty of ingredients. And the cake actually taste fine, but feels greasier than normal.

On the other hand, I've never actually handled the baked cake layers other than to stack and ice. And it doesn't taste greasy.

Working on trifle idea. Had everything (white chocolate, cream cheese, mascarpone, butter) but heavy cream, so here we go...

 
Here's how it went down: the carrot cake was a mass of crumbs...not even cubes, so I used

a lot of filling between layers of crumbs and hoped it sold.

Part of this donation challenge was to use ingredients I already had in the house. I knew I was starting with an apple pie, using frozen ingredients (local apples from this summer and butter/lard pie dough).

I also had leftover cookie dough (chocolate chip and sugar cookie) but really wanted a show stopper and carrot cake is my go-to for that. I already had the less common ingredients in the freezer for (preserved fresh pineapple (God Bless You Rose Levy Beranbaum for this), coconut and nuts) but no carrots. So I bought a pound of organic carrots. I had everything for the cream cheese icing, but then had to bulk it up to use for the trifle.

Cream cheese Icing Converted to Trifle Filling:
8 oz cream cheese
8 oz mascarpone
1/4 C butter
3 bars of Lindt White Chocolate bars
pint of heavy cream (had to buy this after cake fiasco)
powdered sugar/vanilla to taste

https://pix.sfly.com/7xz2sD

 
Here are the cake walk desserts. The ladies in the kitchen ooh'd over the bags of cookies

and immediately asked about the trifle, so I left there not feeling so bad. Especially since these total strangers had NO CLUE they almost had a three layer carrot cake to sell. Sometimes ignorance IS bliss.

My last regret, albeit smaller after the cake failure, was that the white chocolate curls on top of the cake looked like slices of green onion to me. I tried and tried and COULD NOT SEE WHITE CHOCOLATE CURLS.

Slices of thin green onions. That's what I see. Sheesh. I hope no one there had the same reaction.

https://pix.sfly.com/6vojH5

 
This was a donation for an event, so I was just baking and dropping it off. I actually have no clue

what a cake walk is, but it's the third time I've made stuff for various fundraisers. I just bake and drop off to whomever is in the kitchen.

 
One thing that might help in the future...

but it sounds like the structural integrity of this cake was far passed that (and agree with Judy, usually too much oil in these cakes). I ALWAYS line my cake pans with parchment or waxed paper, no matter what the instructions say: heavily butter pan, flour, cut paper to fit into bottom. Butter. Flour.

I've never had a cake stuck in the pan since I've been doing this. Perfect cake turn out every time.

 
well, it turns out you don't BUY cake walk cakes. You win them by playing the game after the dinner

you paid for as part of the fundraiser.

For anyone else totally ignorant of the "cake walk" premise, folks walk in a circle while music plays. When the music stops, the people stop. There will be numbers already placed on the ground in the circle. Whoever is running the game pulls a corresponding number out of a hat and the person standing on the matching number wins that round and gets to pick out the cake/dessert of their choice. Then the game/music continues until all the contributed cakes are taken.

So basically, I could have just made slice & bake tube cookies and donated those. Oh well.

 
I think you're on to something with the oil substitution. Years ago I made the original Bacardi Rum

cake fairly often. That recipe called for " 1/2 cup Wesson oil". One time I made it with something other than that and it failed. There were a lot of changes in oils around that time and new blends becoming available. I might have used canola oil. I used a contact telephone number from Hunt Wesson and was told it was the difference in oils and that I should use 1/3 cup instead of the half cup. It always worked after that. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, perhaps there's been too much canola oil in my diet. smileys/wink.gif

I have grape seed oil and it seems to me it has a lighter, thinner texture than other oils such as canola and olive.

 
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