One Bowl, Two Bowl, Three Bowl, Four (aka - The Carrot Cake Saga)

Late summer is, for us, always the busiest and most stressful time of year.  Multiple pack trips in just a few weeks, overnight trips for the club, day rides, etc. all seem to require our attention all at one time.  So, doing the cooking for these events feels never-ending.  I typically try to plan far enough ahead that if I'm going to bake a pie for one trip, I see how many more I may need coming up and do those at the same time in order to be as efficient as possible.  On this particular day, however, I had used up my supply of "back" ... inventory, we'll call it.  So, I had a LOT of cooking/baking/prep to do.  A partial list would be:

3 pies
3 cakes
double batch of cookies
Biscuits
Sausage Gravy
Salad Dressing
Prep for 2 salads
Prep 3 vegetables
Make up sandwich ingredients for 3 days for 6 people (consists of putting meat/cheese together for all 6 sandwiches for each day & then freezing)
Make 3 batches of Garlic-Herb Potatoes
Bake 4 pork tenderloin
Bake 8 chicken breasts
Prep ingredients for wraps (lettuce/tomato/chicken)
Put together 6 lunches
Clean, fill & pack kitchen boxes with all their items
Wrap in foil or plastic, freeze & then wrap again with newspaper, all of the above

So... I had a VERY Busy Day ahead.  I got the meat baking in the oven & wanted to have the cakes ready to go in as soon as those were done.  I decided on Carrot Cakes for this group of trips & knew I needed 1 small cake & 1 large.  So, I figured I'd multiply the recipe by 3 (thinking the recipe was for 1 small cake  - it wasn't).  First problem.... the food processor wouldn't work, so I had to hand grate all the carrots (30) by hand on my cheese grater (yes, I lost some skin).  Finally got all the carrots grated (In the middle of which I put together the cookie batch so THEY could bake since I obviously wasn't going to have the cakes ready)... just ignore the carrot gratings that are EVERYWHERE.

Now it was time to start mixing the cake recipe.  Let's see... I think all those ingredients should fit in my mixer... it'll work out just right.  Ok, have sugar, butter & crisco in.  Wow, that's really full, but I can probably fit in the (12) eggs & water, right?  Well, yeessss.... But.  It fit, but doesn't really allow the mixer to beat it... so as it SLOWLY mixes, I decide to move to a larger bowl & mix by hand.  Yup, that bowl should work for everything.  Add dry ingredients, add creamed sugar/butter... um... wow, that bowl is really full.  I'll just mix very carefully (regardless that the recipe says to beat for 2 minutes at this point).

Ok... well, got that <kinda> mixed.  Now I can add the carrots, raisins & nuts.  Hmmm.... SO not going to fit.  But, the carrots are in a pretty large bowl, maybe if I do it a little at a time, I can make THAT bowl work.

Here's my 3 bowls and a reduced mess (I'd cleaned up a lot of the carrots & overflow by this time)

Ok, got it in there and mixed (sorta).  Time to pour into the pans.  1, 8x8 and 1, 9x12.  Goodness, that made a LOT of batter... I'll get out another 9x12... and add a little more to pan #1... and #2... and yup, #3.

Finally got them all in the oven.  Unfortunately, no pictures but, surprisingly, they all turned pretty well, considering.  :)    So, I went on to finish up the rest of my list... only took a 12 hour kitchen day but any time I actually get it all done, it's worth it.  :)

And, that's how MY summer rolls......