Carrot Cake Recipe and Pysanky Egg Decorating

This weekends Ukrainian egg decorating workshop inspired a baking frenzy at our home. It began with getting the carrot cake ready for the workshop. The recipe comes from Jon's childhood neighbor Jeannie Hulten. My mother in law shared it with me and ever since it's been a favorite for birthday celebrations. The first alteration I've made to the recipe is to add ground walnuts into the batter. I chop them in our coffee grinder which imparts a mild coffee flavor. I also add a pinch of nutmeg and cloves to enhance the cinnamon.

Carrot Cake Recipe

Mix the following together:
3 cups of grated carrot
4 unbeated eggs
2 cups of sugar
1 1/2 cups of oil

Combine the following dry ingredients together then add to the wet ingredients above:
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp of salt
2 tsp of cinnamon
optional I add 1/4 tsp of nutmeg and cloves
2 cups of flour

Stir in 1/2 cup of ground walnuts

Oil and flour two round cake pans or a 9" x 14" brownie pan
Bake at 350 degrees for 40 mins, add 10-15 minutes for the brownie pan.

Frosting
Combine 8 oz of cream cheese with a 1/4 pound of margarine, add powdered sugar until the frosting has a nice thick but easily spreadable consistancy. Frost the cooled cake and then scatter chopped walnuts on top. Double the frosting recipe for the double layer cake so that you have enough frosting to spread between the layers.

The Ukrainian Egg Decorating Workshop at Art Mind and Soul was a huge success. A wonderful creative group of women took part in the class.  It was a delightful quiet afternoon with the smell of beeswax filling the air. I was thrilled with the rich colors of the dyes, and how quickly everyone grasped the process.

Deb Merrill working on her beautiful chick egg. She came with lovely eggs that her chickens had laid and a wealth of experience of batik and fabric dying.

Joy's lovely red and white eggs with Erin Vazdauskas in the background using iconic Easter imagery.
Patty Sullivan made a pair of delightful eggs in two different colorways. Beth Carr, the owner of the Studios, joined us and decorated an enormous goose egg that challenged our small dye containers. Patricia Boissevain was holding a jewelry class in the adjoining studio, it was a treat to take breaks and see what they were creating.

My husband Jon saved the day by blowing out the eggs out in the morning, what a horrendous task! The resulting eggs inspired exquisite German pancakes. Topped with butter and maple syrup the were a delicious breakfast treat, this recipe comes from an old issue of Yankee Magazine.

In the midst of mixing up the dyes he started the dough for these beautiful loaves of Challah bread that greeted me when I returned home. The smell of fresh bread trumped the beeswax but only by a small margin.

This Saturday I'm bring the dyes and tools along with another cake up to Sweetland Retreat in Manchester, Maine to teach workshop again to a whole new group. Please let me know if you're interested in joining us.