Carrot Cake

Recipe adapted from Better Homes and Gardens

Those of you who have been following the blog for while may remember that I originally posted this carrot cake recipe back in September. To this date it was the only recipe that I actually never got to try (ok, other than sampling the cake batter and frosting). I made the cake for my sister-in-law’s birthday and delivered it to her, but because of differing schedules (and the fact that we lives 2 hours apart) I was never able to try a piece.

In my original post I talked about how carrot cake has never really been a favorite of mine.

I am proud to say that has now changed…

Whenever someone at my office has a birthday the office manager would usually pick up some sort of cake or baked good to bring in. I have decided to take over the “birthday club” and let all of my co-workers request whatever they’d like me to bake for their birthday. To kick things off one of them requested carrot cake. I wasn’t really crazy about the cream cheese frosting last time I made this, so I wanted to change things up a bit. While looking back at the original recipe it dawned on me that I COPIED THE RECIPE WRONG! 2 3-ounce packages of cream cheese apparently translated into 2 EIGHT ounce packages of cream cheese in my mind (I’ve never bought cream cheese any other way)! No wonder I thought it was too cream cheese-y, it was! I decided to just use the full 8 ounces of cream cheese and not waste two of them. The result was a MUCH better cream cheese frosting than I had previously made.

I was actually able to try the cake this time and loved it! The cake itself is incredibly moist, and tastes delicious with the not so cream cheese-y frosting. Instead of decorating the outside with pecan halves I decided to change things up a bit with finely crushed pecans. I’ve already had another request to make this cake again in April, and honestly I can’t wait! Enjoy!

Carrot Cake
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2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
3 cups finely shredded carrot
1 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs

Cream Cheese Frosting
1 (8 oz) package cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup (1 stick) salted butter, room temperature
2 tsp. vanilla
4 cups powdered sugar
1 Tbsp milk
½ cup pecans, finely crushed

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium sized bowl beat together flour, sugar, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon. Add in carrot, vegetable oil and eggs and combine with an electric mixer. Pour into two well greased 9 inch round cake pans. Bake for 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean.

To make frosting, beat together cream cheese, butter and vanilla. Add in powdered sugar in one cup increments. Add milk. More milk can be added until desired consistency is reached. Place frosting between the two cake layers and use remaining frosting for the top and sides.

If desired place crushed pecans around the edges of the cake (use your hands to press them into the frosting).

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Tags: Cake, cream cheese

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011 at 9:00 pm and is filed under Cake. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.