Random Monday

Today we're going to take a break from Ravelympics Knitting and talk about some other stuff. First topic? Cake! I thought that might get your attention on a Monday morning. Mickael adores Carrot Cake. He loves it and eats it whenever he can. I haven't found a recipe that I'm happy with yet - until now - so I haven't made very many Carrot Cakes, which means he's been stuck trying to track down Carrot Cake in the wild.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had stumbled across Lucy's blog at Attic 24. It's mostly crochet (in glorious, yummy colors), but she also has recipes (also beautifully photographed) on her blog. One of the recipes she has is Carrot Cake! I thought the recipe looked good and was interested in the non-traditional, non-cream cheese frosting as well, so I tried it out. Now Lucy is in England and apparently when we in the USA declared and won our independence, we decided that we would measure our ingredients for cooking differently too (bet you didn't learn that in school). See we use cups to measure flour - they weigh it! Even Tablespoons, which are apparently found on both sides of the pond, are different sizes depending on which side you're on. So I figured I would just convert Lucy's measurements to American measurements using that all purpose tool, the Swiss Army Knife of the Internets - Google. So I searched for measurement conversion sites. One of them told me that 225 grams of flour was 1 cup. OK, so I thought I'd just double check that on another site because, as we all know, not everything on the Internets is fact. Measurement conversion site #2 told me that 225 grams of flour is 2 cups. Hmmm. This could be a problem. If it was just a cooking recipe, I could wing it and figure it out as I go, but a baking recipe is a whole different story - winging it with baking is how hockey pucks were invented (seriously - a batch of cupcakes gone horribly wrong became the first hockey pucks. OK, I just made that up, but it's possible, you know.) The only option for giving this recipe a fair trial was to go upstairs and get The Scale. So I weighed my dry ingredients, my liquid measuring cups have mL on them, and I had already figured out that Tablespoons in the UK are a little bigger than ours here in the US.

But my international baking education wasn't over yet! You see, when I went to grate the carrots for the cake, I read in the recipe that it takes about 2 medium carrots to equal 150 grams. So I pulled out 3 medium carrots (so I wouldn't have to go back to the fridge) and started grating. Let me just say that Tablespoons aren't the only thing bigger in the UK! It took me 4 medium size US carrots to get the proper weight. (I think I may have just solved my bunny problem - if I can just explain to them about the wonders of UK carrots...) Anyway, I mixed and baked and frosted and I got the most yummy, wonderful carrot cake! I will definitely be making this one again, but I'll have to pick up some more carrots first.

Now that we've covered cake, some history, and cultural differences, I wanted to mention something crochet-y. I will periodically check out new groups in Ravelry and over the weekend there was a new group formed - English Country Garden CAL. It's going to involve a new flower crochet design once a month (starting in March and ending in September) with an optional contest thing involving using the flowers in a design. I thought it sounded like fun and since I have no time and really need to get other things done and I'm in the middle of knitting a monument to garter stitch, I signed right up. Check out the link for more info if you're interested!

Tune in tomorrow for a Franket update!