My mom had a few friends over for brunch last week and she wanted something special to serve them. Not the usual bacon and eggs. Nothing wrong with a good old fry-up from time to time, but sometimes an occasion just calls for a little bit of something else.
I shared a breakfast the other day with L. We treated ourselves to a rare hour away from our offices and routine and went to a beautiful little restaurant all by ourselves. He ordered a fruit platter filled with fresh, seasonal fruits and nothing else. I kept on thinking that it looked so gorgeous and tasted so good, but it needed something else. Maybe a slice or two of melba toast. A cracker. A tiny croissant.
So, when my mom mentioned wanting to serve fruit, the fruit platter came to mind. But with what? Maybe something resembling a bit of a tea treat, but not really. And that is how these breakfast tarts happened. I made some sweet pastry and then played around with a combination of fillings, before deciding on the yogurt and cream cheese mixture. Plenty of options really.
The plates came back to the kitchen with not a crumb in sight. Success I suspect.
It was L's birthday last week and I wanted to bake something for his wonderful staff. You see, last year was a rough year for him initially. That was until he went looking for greener pastures and some of his staff members and a good friend joined him. They are wonderful people, who contributed largely to the rest of his year being so much better. A little bit of cake went their way as a small token of thanks. And of course it is always nice to share in a bit of birthday magic.
It is never easy for me to decide what to bake. I have a million recipes (well, L does say that I can exaggerate, but not sure I am though) floating through my head and finding THE ONE is always a bit of a mental tug of war. It was my sister who helped me out by casually suggesting carrot cake. It always seems to be a winner and why not.
Well, it did go down a treat, especially the icing and therefor a post is required, as the recipe was requested. I love it when that happens. Love to spread cake happiness around.
This is the sort of recipe that needs to be shared, as it is so easy-peasy. And it takes hardly any time to prepare and leaves you with very little washing-up to do. Best of all, it is light and moist and not too rich either.
