Our latest recipe contest, Your Best Snacking Cake, invited a huge wave of absolutely delicious-looking recipes from our community of talented cake bakers. With so many delicious entries, we really had our work cut out for us. We tested, tasted, tasted a little more (it's cake!) whittled it down, and finally decided on two finalists: Clintonhillbilly's Cinnamon-Anise Snack Cake and Jessie Sheehan's Chocolate-Carrot Snacking Cake.
How did we pick a winner? Staring down these two outstanding confections was no solution at all, but thankfully we received an huge volume of votes. It was a very close race, but a winner has been chosen. Cue the drumroll...
Jessie Sheehan's Chocolate-Carrot Snacking Cake With Cream Cheese Frosting
Congratulations Jessie, your cake was loved by all! We also want to congratulate our runner-up. Clintonhillbilly, your cinnamon anise cake is absolutely delicious (and everyone should make it).
Jessie is a cookbook author and longtime dessert-crafter, so we inquired a little further about what fuels her sweet creations.
Q&A
Photo by Jessie Sheehan
What's your least favorite food? Beets. I basically love all food, but I definitely draw the lines at beets. I'll eat beets in borscht (with a large dollop of sour cream or crème fraîche, please...) but that's about it.
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Top Comment:
“Go to Jessie Sheehan Bakes Facebook page. There’s is a great photo of the inside & top of the cake (with sprinkles on top) & you can see it. I would put the pic up but it doesn’t look like I can attach it. It is delicious! You can easily cut the frosting recipe in half if you think it’s too much. For me, never enough.”
What's the best thing you've made so far this year? I think I'll go with my world's best Rice Krispie Treats with a secret ingredient: sweetened condensed milk. Rice Krispie treats are kind of my everything, and these ones are off-the-charts delish.
Tell us about your most spectacular kitchen disaster: They happen all the time, but one that sticks out is when I attempted to make Cooks Illustrated's yellow cake with chocolate frosting for my son's 8th birthday, and I added cornstarch instead of cake flour. I was flummoxed as to why the cake was so dry and cornbread-like.
What is your idea of comfort food? Mac and cheese followed by chocolate cake.
Apron or no apron? Apron!
What is your favorite food-related scene in a movie? I don't remember the exact scene, but so much delicious food is consumed in the movie Tampopo.
Who is someone you would love to cook for, and why? I'm really a baker, and not so much a cook. I would like to bake for my paternal grandmother who died many years ago. She too was a baker, but when she was alive I had not yet discovered my passion for making sweets. She always made a lemon velvet sheet cake when I visited her which I adored (despite the fact that I am team chocolate). I have developed my own version of her cake—hers came from a box—and I would love to enjoy a slice (or many) with her.
It SOUNDS great, but I have no idea what it LOOKS like, because your photographer and editor choose to only include a top-down photo of the icing. The article is about a snake cake, and you only show pics of some icing... Typical.
Go to Jessie Sheehan Bakes Facebook page. There’s is a great photo of the inside & top of the cake (with sprinkles on top) & you can see it. I would put the pic up but it doesn’t look like I can attach it. It is delicious! You can easily cut the frosting recipe in half if you think it’s too much. For me, never enough.
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