Mini Ombre Yellow Petal Carrot Cakes

“Wherever you go – no matter what the weather – always bring your own sunshine.”

So if it’s winter, and you’re going to a party, bring your own bright yellow cake! That would be the literal interpretation of this quote, right? I’d been wanting to do this petal frosting thing for a while, and I finally did it. Good thing it was a mini cake (well, two of them), because it actually took a while! Maybe that was also because I did an ombre version that twisted around in a swirly pattern. I also did it late at night and it was hard to make sure I was on the right shade of yellow each time! But I did it – and now I will share it with you!

So obviously you can do this with any cake, but I chose my all time favorite to bake – carrot cake! I am an eye doctor, after all, so yeah, eat more carrots. (And spinach, and kale, and squash etc…but just carrot in this post)!

Without further ado…

CARROT CAKE

(caps lock excited status!)

3 large carrots, grated

1 1/4 cup canola oil

1 tsp vanilla

4 large eggs

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 cups flour

pinch of salt

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp cinnamon

1/8 tsp nutmeg

1/8 tsp cloves

Pulse carrots in blender. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 3 four-inch spring-form cake pans generously. (Recipe should be enough for 2 three-layer mini cakes)

Mix oil, sugar, vanilla, and eggs in stand mixer. In a separate bowl, combine all dry ingredients and mix well.

Pour dry ingredients into wet ingredients, mixing well. Then add carrots into mix. Raisins and walnuts can be added at this time too if desired.

Bake for 20-30 minutes depending on your oven. Mine took 22 minutes.

For the layers in between the cakes, I used cream cheese frosting because it tastes awesome with carrot cake. I also used it for my crumb coat. For the decorating, I’ve learned the hard way to always use buttercream frosting – not cream cheese frosting (even though I think the cream cheese one tastes better, it just does not hold its shape well).

For the frosting recipes, see this post.

Frosting directions: To create the ombre look, use yellow gel food coloring – the more you use, the deeper the yellow will be. I used white, and then pastel yellow, and then a brighter yellow. I also always leave some white in case I need to make more.

Once you’ve made the colors, fill your piping bags with the three colors and use a Wilton 12 tip, or the equivalent to pipe the petals.

So this is how you pipe it: Start at the top with the bright yellow petals. Pipe a sphere, stop squeezing, and pull to the right. Once you’ve done three bright yellow, continue with three pastel yellow in the same way, then three white to the bottom. Now, here’s the trick. When you get to the next column, the top bright yellow gets kicked to the bottom, so the top has two bright yellow, then three pastel yellow, then three white, then one bright yellow at the bottom. So next column has one bright yellow at the top, three pastel yellow, three white, and two bright yellow and the bottom. Next column has three pastel yellow at the top, then three white, then three bright yellow. Next column has two pastel yellow at the top, then three white, then three bright yellow, then one pastel yellow at the bottom. Continue this way until you finish the cake. It will create a cool swirl ombre pattern. Don’t worry if they don’t work out perfectly at the end of the cake where you started the pattern – it’s not very noticeable! At the top of the cake, I just did an ombre where I did bright yellow, then pastel yellow, then a white flower in the middle.

Enjoy!