A Nolensville man has made it to the finals of a Food Network cooking competition! Nate Klingman, AKA The Bearded Baker, shares his recipe for Southern Style Carrot Cake (see recipe below) and tells us about being a contestant on "Bakeaway Camp with Martha Stewart". Watch Nate in the finale of Bakeaway Camp with Martha Stewart tonight at 8pm on The Food Network.
The Bearded Baker's Southern Style Carrot Cake
Cake Ingredients
2 Cups All Purpose Flour
2 Tsp Baking Soda
1/2 Tsp Sea Salt
2 Tsp Cinnamon
3 Large Eggs
2 Cups White Sugar
3/4 Cup Vegetable Oil
3/4 Cup Whole Fat Buttermilk
2 Tsps Vanilla
2 Cups Grated Carrots
8 Ounces Crushed Pineapple (drained)
3 1/2 Ounces Toasted Coconut
1 Cup Toasted Chopped Walnuts
Buttermilk Caramel Glaze
1 Cup White Sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 Cup Whole Fat Buttermilk
1/2 Cup Unsalted Butter
1 tablespoon light corn syrup or brown rice syrup
1 tsp Vanilla
Cream Cheese Buttercream
1 block of cream cheese softened
2 sticks of butter at room temp
1 2lb bag of powdered sugar
Splash of milk
Splash of vanilla
1. Take all the random pots and pans out of your oven and preheat to 350.
2. Dump the first 4 ingredients into a bowl and stir to combine and then set aside. Make sure you get them mixed really well to ensure that everything distributes easily, don’t skip this step.
3. In a separate mixing bowl, mix the next 5 ingredients just until combined.
4. Slowly add the dry mixture to the wet mixture
5. Add crushed pineapple, cooled coconut and walnuts and mix till combined
6. Pour into 2 prepared 9 inch pans sprayed with cooking spray and flour (I use Bakers Joy and it works like a charm)
7. Pop into the oven and bake until golden and a toothpick comes out clean. While baking, enjoy the awesome aroma that’ll fill your house!!
While the cakes are baking, whip up the caramel sauce.
8. Add all ingredients except baking soda to a fairly decent size sauce pan. It’s important to be a little big as the sauce will bubble up a LOT when you add your baking soda.
9. Let the sauce come to a rolling boil and slowly add your baking soda. Be careful as the mixture is going to come to life at this point. You may think it’s going to expand out of the pan and take over but hold your ground and stir that pan until it submits. Once you notice the sauce starting to turn a light amber color it’s ready.
10. Pour the sauce directly over your hot pans when they come out of the oven. It’s important to do it right away while the cakes are still hot to ensure it soaks in. Let the cakes cool in the pan for 10 minutes and then pop them out and let cool on a rack for a couple hours
Let’s frost this thing!
11. whip together the cream cheese and butter.
12. Slowly add your powdered sugar and mix well
13. Add your vanilla and if needed, add milk. You may find you don’t need the milk but it depends on what you want the consistency to be.
14. Slice each cake horizontally into 2 but make sure they are fully cooled and be careful because they will want to fall apart on you. You should have 4 cakes at this point.
15. Add a smear of frosting to your board/cake plate/whatever you are using and add your first cake. Add a 1/4 inch layer of buttercream and add your next cake, repeat till you are done.
16. Frost the cake with a generous amount of frosting and decorate however you wish.
You should definitely store this cake in the fridge but I personally like to bring a slice to room temp before enjoying.
