Carrot Cake (HBR style)

*disclaimer:  if you are just joining us, do not be fooled, I am NOT a food blogger.  If you're looking for good food and beautiful pictures, go visit Autumn at The Beanstalk or Deb at Smitten Kitchen*

Living in HBR (a dorm filled with high school boys) means lots of baking and in large quantities.  On the plus side, my math skills are improving as I am constantly doubling or tripling recipes; and converting my American recipes to the metric system has also provided a lot of mental gymnastics.  So the next time you need to feed 19 high school boys or a small country, I will gladly share my recipe (that I shamelessly stole) for Carrot Cake Recipe (HBR style).  I've already done all the math for you.  If you want to make a reasonable amount of cake, you can find the original recipe (with much better pictures) at Visual Heart .

Carrot Cake
serves: about 19 high school boys or 30 regular sized humans
prep time: allow for about 4 hours of prep time as you will be distracted by requests to open the staff office, find band-aids, turn on the washing machine, or just talk. If you are a hermit this might only take an hour.

Zest 2 oranges.  Realize that you have no idea what it means to "zest an orange" because all of your previous experiences with orange zest have been in a bottle.  Google "how to zest an orange".  Search the kitchen for a grater to zest said oranges.  Discover there is no grater.  Go beg a cheese grater off of your fellow RAs.

Zest and juice 2 oranges.

Amuse the high school boys by pretending that the oranges are actually sea anemones.

Wash and peel 20 (at least) carrots--because Germany doesn't particularly care what its produce looks like as long as it's still edible, the number of carrots may vary depending on what size (or shape) you find in the bag.

Discover that you have no idea how to work the food processor (or if it even works) so proceed to grate 7 1/2 cups of carrots by hand.  (Subtract about an hour of prep time if you have a working food processor).

Crack an entire carton of eggs, because eggs come in cartons of 10 in Germany and not by the dozen. Notice there are brown spots floating in the yolks.  Google "weird brown spots in eggs" to make sure they are not dangerous.  Learn that these spots are normal in brown eggs. Remain skeptical. 

Try to calculate how many times 1 1/4 cups of butter goes into 250g.  Give up.  Decide that a little extra butter never hurt anyone. Mix the entire package of butter and a quarter of another with the eggs. 

Lug your 5 lb. bag of brown sugar from the attic and measure out 5 cups. 

Spend 15 minutes looking for vanilla extract before remembering that it comes in a large, orange bottle instead of a brown, glass bottle. (If you know where your vanilla extract is, subtract 15 minutes from prep time).  Add 5 teaspoons. 

Mix in 5 cups of flour.  Realize that the baking powder and baking soda are in identical containers. Worry that you are going to mix them up.  Discover that you need 5 teaspoons of each so it doesn't really matter. Proceed with caution. 

Add 1 1/4 tsp salt, 2 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1 1/4 tsp nutmeg.  Realize you forgot the nutmeg as you write a blog post about how to make carrot cake.  Come to the conclusion that the cake is now ruined.  Decide that cream cheese frosting covers a multitude of sins.  Add 2 1/2 tsp ginger (the original recipe says fresh ginger, but let's be honest, who actually grates their own ginger? not this kid).  Add 1/2ish tsp of clove (the ish is because you don't have time to find an 1/8 tsp). 

Stir in carrots, orange zest, and orange juice. Ignore the part of the recipe where it tells you to add nuts and raisins because  there are few things more disgusting to high school boys than walnuts and dried fruit.

Don't be alarmed if said high schools boys comment that the batter looks vomit.  It kind of does.  (Those of you with weak stomachs should probably not look at the next picture). 

Grease the large pan whose actually dimensions I am too lazy to measure.  (Adds up to about two 9x13 pans).  If you are working with a convection oven you can turn the oven to 155C.  If you don't have a convection oven, you probably should have preheated your oven to 350F before starting this recipe. Because of the power of the convection oven, cover cake with pan lid so the cake doesn't become a brick with squishy insides.  Bake 25 minutes. Remove lid. Bake 15 more minutes without lid. 

Make cream cheese frosting using 3 cartons of cream cheese (about 24 oz) because German cream cheese is much more watery than American cream cheese, 3 boxes (6 cups) of powdered sugar, 1/2ish cup of butter, 2 tsp vanilla extract.  Completely forget to take pictures of frosting-making process to erase the image of the puke batter. 

Here is the finished product.  And so despite it's vomitous beginning, the general consensus was that it was "okay". (If you're looking for rave reviews, you've come to the wrong blog.)