Recipes - Carrot Cake Whoopie Pies

I found this recipe on Tracey's Culinary Adventures, and it was awesome :) I converted the cup measurements into weights, to make it easier for my British friends to use! If you'd rather use cups, then feel free to look at the original recipe. 

Ingredients
For the cake
120g unsalted butter, at room temperature
105g granulated sugar
85g light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
300g plain flour
1.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
.5 tsp ground nutmeg
.5 tsp salt
150g grated carrot (roughly 2 small-medium carrots)

For the filling
90g butter
120g cream cheese
220g icing sugar
.5 tsp vanilla

Directions
For the cake, cream the butter and two sugars together until they are light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, and stir in the vanilla. Measure all the dry ingredients (flour, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, salt) into the bowl and then stir in to form a soft dough. Mix in the grated carrots, then cover the bowl with cling film and refrigerate for an hour. Longer is better, 30 minutes will do in a pinch.

Prepare your baking trays by cutting a sheet of non-stick baking paper for each try. Depending on the size of your trays, and how many you have, you will probably need to bake in batches.

When the dough is chilled, turn on the oven to pre heat to 180 degrees C, or gas mark 4. Use two teaspoons to scoop the dough into little mounds on the tray, a bit smaller a plumb. Don't worry about them being too neat, but try to make sure they are all the same size. Place them about 2 inches apart as they will flatten and spread out when baking, and you don't want to make a uni-cookie. I managed to fit 6 on each tray, and made 24 in total.

Place the trays in the oven and bake for 15 minutes, but check after 12 minutes to see that they're not cooking too fast. The lower down tray will probably take 18 minutes. They are cooked when they are golden brown and somewhat firm to the touch. Slide the parchment sheets off onto cooling racks and rinse the trays under cold running water to cool them down. Re-line them with parchment and separate out the rest of the dough and bake that in the same manner. The cooked cakes can be peeled off the paper after about 5 minutes - before that and they will stick a little. When they are completely cool, store them in a tin before you ice them.

For the filling, put all the ingredients except the icing sugar in a bowl and beat until smooth. Then add the icing sugar in 3 or 4 parts, through a sieve, each time mixing til smooth. At the end is should be light and fluffy. Get out all the baked cakes and match them up as best you can into pairs that have the same size/shaped foot. Spread lots of the filling onto the flat side of one and sandwich them together. If you have left over icing, eat it with a spoon over the sink before washing the bowl. But don't tell anyone I told you that. If there's lots, maybe try putting more on the cakes next time. It's quite good on scones or even just as a cheeky sandwich.

Store your whoopie pies in the fridge, on a plate wrapped in clingfilm or in a sealed container. They should last a week like this, if you can stop yourself from scoffing them all. They're pretty big, but they're ridiculously more-ish!

Love and hugs

It's Chriiiistmaaaaaaaaas!

I am 99.9% sure that you cannot be as excited about Christmas as me! Christmas is hands down, without a shadow of a doubt, my favourite day of the year. You get to sing carols and eat too much and people give you presents and cards and everyone is cheerful in the shops and everything looks pretty and you can wear nice clothes just because and take pictures all day. Birthdays are pretty good too, but Christmas is more general, and everything everywhere gets decorated. And birthdays don't have all the carols.

Now, I know you have been eagerly awaiting this since the snippet on my last post, but here it is, the grand reveal:
MY CHRISTMAS TREE!
Isn't it spectacular! It was the last tree left at the tree place, and we only just managed to fit it into the room!

This is my dad's favourite decoration - he plays the french horn so we got this for him a few years ago.


And this one is my mum's favourite - she's a big fan of having the baby Jesuses at Christmas time, so she likes this wee nativity that we've had for as long as I can remember!

Here are the presents (you don't get that big a pile when there's only five of you and you're all adults!)

And here are the dinky trees that we've had since we spent a winter in Taiwan (the millennium, in fact.) Do excuse the naff tinsel hat on the clock. My mum seems to think that this is an appropriate way to treat wee bits of tinsel. Not sure I agree.

These are the cookies which I posted about the other week, which I iced with the royal icing left over from the cake.

And this is the aforementioned cake with its ADORABLE nativity! Isn't it cute? I love the sheep. They're so dinky! We've got a big red ribbon to put around the outside to hide the fact that I can't smooth off royal icing for love nor money, but that has to wait until the icing is much drier.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas!

Love and hugs

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Dear reader, today is a special day - that's right, a post not about my mum, but about my dad, because it's his birthday today *blows hooter, waves tiny flag*

Well actually, the post isn't about him either, because today was actually an interesting day. As days up here go, that is. We had a party! Not a birthday party though, a painting party!

As my dad is a minister, that leaves him with responsibilities for things like looking after church premises. You would think he'd be quite busy chasing that flock around, but apparently not so much. So today, my mum, dad and myself went to the church at Melness, on the other side of the kyle. It has a gorgeous view!



Along with some of the other church folk, we did some work on the window frames. We scraped off old paint, we dug out rotting wood, we sealed up some draughty gaps, and we put on some shiny new white high gloss top coat. There were a myriad of problems of course - more rot than expected, more peeling paint than expected, no undercoat, bigger draughty gaps than expected etc etc, so the job is only partially done, however the size of the thing (there are 19 windows in the church, and we're working inside and out) and the size of the working party (six) we did about as much as might be expected of us anyway.



I learned how to use silicone sealant, and as such did all the windows. Actually, I lie I only did 13, but that's still quite a lot. I quite enjoyed it. Pretty sure I deserve an NVQ now (national vocational qualification). Jussayin. We had two tea breaks, with cake, and cake with our lunch. I ate a lot of cake. Apparently because I am still a "young thing" I am expected to eat vast quantities of cake. This is why the youth of today are fat, dear reader. We need to start a revolution! No more force-feeding cake. That said, I did what was expected of me without hint of complaint. What? Don't look at me like that, it was good cake!

After we'd cleared up all the mess we made, mum, dad and I headed over to Bettyhill, because there's a chip shop there (it's the closest one, and it's 13 miles away! Talk about the middle of nowhere). Om nom nom nom.



Then we went for a walk along Farr beach, which is actually not very far from anything, it's right behind the chip shop/tourist information centre (yes, they are the same place, officially). It wasn't sunset, but the sun was starting to get low in the sky, in a very photogenic manner. And there was a lost photogenic welly boot lying in the wash of the tide. It was so romantic... (!) check out my ace photo.



Ever wanted to hire a welly boot photographer? I'm thinking of starting a business - boot photography, well-shod AND well-shot. No? I shall continue.

We saw other things on the beach too, like this dead dogfish. Did you know, a dogfish is like a shark's little cousin? They both have five gills and the same kind of skin. Dad moved it. That's right, you heard me. On his birthday this year my dad wrestled a shark... Honest...



It was very pretty generally, so I took lots of pictures - you can see a selection of these below. If you're my facebook friend you can see them all there. If you're not, then that's a shame. I don't think my photography is good enough to deserve a flickr account. Not that other people let that stop them.



Anyways, that's all for today, its WAY past my bedtime, and daughters of the manse must get up for church on Sunday mornings. Therefore dear reader (I have discovered from my blog stats that there are actually other people than my mum out there, so you've been promoted from imaginary, in case you were wondering) I must bid thee adieu and farewell, and on the morrow you shall hear from me again.

Did you know, the more tired I am the more I don't shut up... who knew!

Love and hugs