Im soooooio excited! Ive been planning this for a whole year. There are 65 people invited, 40 confirmed so far.

Im making a 16 inch cake. I know, a lot of servings but I needed the room for my design so I really dont care. Besides...left over carrot cake! woohoo!

Im going to just do a single layer for the bottom tier. It will look kind of thin this way, Im hoping it will be alright as far as the total look is concerned. The top tier is going to be a sinlge layer, cut in half and stacked to make a 2 layer half top tier.

Its a jungle theme. The top tier will have a waterfal going down to the second tier. I have all the animals and I made the palmtrees (with help from you guys, but out of 16, only FOUR didnt break. )

Im going to use a non-refriderated cream cheese buttercream recipe someone found for me. I hope its not too runny, I didnt have a chance to do a test run on it, but luckily since its a landscape-type cake, the icing isnt going to have to look smooth at all.

Well I guess I have a few questions.

Im geting ready to bake this cake right now. The pan instructions for the 16 inch said 50-60 minutes. Does the same apply with carrot cake? It says to bake at 325. Same also?

Do you guys normally torte your carrot cakes? This thing, with all the nuts and raisens and such, plus being 16 inches I think is going to be a nightmare to torte, but Im afraid there wont be enough yummy icing if I dont. Suggestions for torting this thing? ( I do have a large cake torter-thingy by the way.)

Also,m have any of you used this icing recipe? If so can you give me your feedback on it?

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I forget where its taken from but if I find it I will post the link for proper credit.


Due to the numerous questions I have about this cream cheese icing - here are a few things I have learned over the many years of using this icing.

1. It tastes really good as icing and as a filling

2. Add flavoring to it for an even more tasty addition to the cake. Lemon, orange, strawberry, mint and etc all work well. The flavor emulsions and powder I have on the shopping cart don't add any color to the icing- just flavor.
(2B). If you put orange flavor in the cake and or icing - don't tell the customer it is orange - that isn't what they want to hear - tell them it is dreamsicle - then they go WOW this is really good.

3. This icing will not melt in the out door receptions - that is if you don't leave it in the sun at 105º for 6 hours. It reacts to heat just like the regular buttercream.

4. You can make borders, roses, and etc - just like regular buttercream icing.

5. It will be a very soft ivory color because of the cream cheese. Very little color and for the better taste most brides are just fine with that tiny bit of color.

6. No we don't refrigerate the cakes once they have this icing on them.

7. After we are through with the icing for the week it goes in the refrigerator until the next week when it is needed. The next week take it out of the refrigerator the night before you need it and use up what you have left and then make more to continue with the cakes. If you don't use it all just put it back in the refrigerator until you need it again. I have never had any of this type of icing go bad using this proceedure with the icing. This icing is really very stable to use.

8. I have eaten cakes with this icing on them (kept at room tempreture appx. 75º) after they are a week old and it was just fine. If your customers want to refrigerate the cake that is fine but it isn't absolutely essential.

Cream Cheese Buttercream Icing
Maximum recipe for a 5 Qt. mixing bowl

5 1/2 lbs. of powdered sugar
3/4 C +2T warm water
1 T Butavan
12 oz. warm cream cheese
1 1/4 lb. of solid shortning with the transfats (Not Crisco)
(Sweet-tex, Alpine or even a store brand - must have the transfats)
1 1/2 t. salt

Mix with the paddle beater by hand until slightly moistened and the place on the mixer.

The air can be worked out of the icing by starting the motor on the mixer on slow and lifting the bowl of icing up and down several times until the air is worked out. Additional water may be added for a softer icing. Finish beating until smooth.

Transfer into storage containers being careful to not put lumps of unmixed icing stuck to the sides of the bowl into the containers.

it sounds pretty cool, and also tasty!

as to how long to bake it, does the recipe not tell you? i wouldnt trust what it says on the pan, cause different recipes bake differently. carrot cake is usually pretty runny (the two i have done anyway) i think, so it takes a while. you will probably want to use a rose nail (or two) in the mile of the pan, it will help it to cook faster/ more evenly.

torting it, i would try! the knife will get caught on all the bits, and just tear. i wouldnt worry about it, you can always just make your icing layer a bit thicker.
xx

Hooray for 1st birthdays! My monster is only 3 months away from his and I was thinking carrot cake too!

Love the idea of a room-temp safe cream cheese icing, I will save this recipe for sure. When is your party? I may try it soon (I'm on this site too often to not get caking-fever!) but I want to be sure to get any results to you in time. Let us know if you ever find the source!

ETA: Wait, what the heck is Butavan?!

I dont know what butavan is really. Its some kind of vanilla flavoring. Maybe an emulsion. I just used vanilla extract and a little bit of orange extract. I love the slight taste of orange cream cheese on carrot cake. YUM!!!!

OK GUYS IM DONE!!! I finished the cake about 2 hours ago. FYI I really liked this icing. It tasted good, plus it is the only cream cheese icing I have made that wasnt runny. It was just like buttercream ONLY THING is I had lots of holes in it, which Im sure, has to do with the fact that I was mixing it with a hand mixer and it was a huge batch. My poor mixer had a hard time with that one. I think ol mixey is going to have to be retired soon. I need a kitchen aid.

Anyways, the cake looks ok. not exactly what I had envisioned in my head but Im satisfied with it. It just looks a little plain to me. Maybe because I didnt get to use as many palmtrees as I would have liked. Stupid things all broke. I will NEVER make those again. Ever. Well, maybe if they are held together with wire and such. Stupid wilton book gave horrible instructions though. If you have the 2009 yearbook dont make the trees like the book says. it wont work.

The party is Sunday. His first birthday is on fathers day. Cool huh?

Its 2 layers of a 16" round. Animals are plastic, gumpaste details.

LOVE IT LOVE IT! It turned out super cute, not plain at all! I flippin love the fish, that looks SO cool! I will definitely have to experiment with this icing recipe now! Thanks so much!

Aww thanks for the comments. We had the party yesterday. There were 40 + people and it was total chaos. It was fun, but pretty stressful. I decided Im not throwing a party that big again. LOL. It sounds fun until you actually have to do it.

Everybody loved the fish. I think that was the favorite part. There were lots of ooos and aaahhhs. It made me feel nice. LOL. Fun stuff.

I forgot to post a picture of his little cake.

Its made with whipped topping only, no BC. He doesnt like the taste of buttercream (of course we had to test this out in advance!) so I just used all WT so I could make sure he would actually dig his face into it and not throw it across the room.