My Friday Ritual

So the end of the week means two things:

1. I get to go to Vancouver and visit Matthew!
2. I get to go to Vancouver and visit Matthew and must figure out what on earth I'm going to bring!

While at the gym Thursday night, I day dreamed about all the delicious things I could bake for him. After much thought I decided on carrot cake. This is not just ANY carrot cake. It's a carrot-zucchini cake with tons of crunchy walnuts and cream cheese icing. I made this a few weeks ago and it went over very well (I think a few of the boys became a tad bit addicted). On the way to the grocery store I decided to make brownies as well. Technically they are German Chocolate Squares (with chopped up Rolo's, walnuts, chippits and coconut). Do you see the need to go to the gym now? These are not thigh-friendly recipes :P I couldn't for the life of me remember how many carrots and zucchini I needed so I bought enough to feed an army, literally.

Friday morning came and I started my baking marathon (thank goodness it was a snow day! No school!). I started with the carrot cake... As I grated the carrots and zucchini I realized I bought wayyyyyy too many veggies. So what is the solution to this problem? Make 3 times the recipe! So for the next hour I grated veggies, chopped walnuts, mixed and mixed and mixed some more (have I mentioned how much I adore KitchenAid mixers yet??!!). I snapped a few pics between adding the many ingredients.

I wasn't quite paying attention... the flour went a little wild! haha

Lets just say 3x the recipe makes A LOT of cake. I ended up with three 9 inch rounds and a gigantic sheet cake. I hope Matt really really likes carrot cake because he's getting a lot of it :P 

At this point one of my bf's Kelsey came over and helped me make the cream cheese icing. Logically, if you triple the cake you need to triple the icing right? Lets just say me made a shit ton of icing. I ran into a little snafoo.. mental note people.. vanilla from Mexico is basically a billion times stronger than regular crappy vanilla from Canada. Needless to say I added half the amount and it was still too strong. I just threw in some lemon juice and zest and it was saved (thank goodness). I left one round at home for my parents and packed the rest to take to Vancouver. Here's a slice from the double layer cake I finished in Vancouver..

Matt's roommate Ku has been bugging me for months to make those brownies. I decided to, once again, triple the recipe. It normally makes a 9x9 but I used a 9x13 this time. These brownies are straight from the devil... rolo's, walnuts, chippits and coconut! Delicious! They are super fast and easy to make, especially when Kelsey does the hard work of mixing all the yummy bits in. As soon as they popped out the oven we were off to Vancouver! My phone does not do this justice..

The plan for Friday night?? Hosting a little dinner party...