Carrot Cake

Now I am not a huge fan of carrot cake. I think it goes back to my firm belief that carrots make you blind!! I know all you people are saying “no Amy, carrots are good for your eyesight.” Well let me give you my theory: I have loathed carrots from the day I was born. I would flatly refuse to eat them and when I was “forced” I needed to wash them down with a giant glass of milk. I have always had perfect vision. As a matter of fact I had never even been to an ophthalmologist until a few years ago and that was due to pregnancy issues. The rest of my family has been rabbit like in their love of the orange root vegetable. I think my mother would eat them with every meal if given the choice. THEY ARE ALL BLIND! OK not legally blind, but their eyesight left much to be desired. So let’s recap – Amy refuses to eat carrots and she is the only one in the house without spectacles. My ban on carrots continued until I had Stinkles, at which point I determined I needed to be a grown-up and eat the buggers. POOF, glasses for Amy. I would like to point out that I still have great vision, my glasses are for tint and to focus my astigmatism, but I can’t help notice the correlation between my carrot eating and the need for glasses.

OK back on topic, carrot cake. It seems like everyone likes it. I remember being younger and my Uncle was a chef at a local restaurant. I used to complain that everyone ordering carrot cake would get a cute little frosting carrot on their piece of cake but my plain old vanilla cake never had any decoration. Lucky for me, I was spoiled and he used to add frosting carrots to my vanilla cake!! I never understood why people would want a dessert that tasted like vegetables.

In keeping with my open mind attitude for the past year I decided to give Carrot Cake another try. This worked out excellent seeing Brian requested carrot cake doughnuts for his birthday.

My mother has a carrot cake recipe that I have always used so I cracked out the recipe and calculated the calories: 453/slice. AHH! That is more than I normally spend on my entire lunch. Obviously something had to be done. I sat down and racked my brain and came up with the following.

Carrot Cake
• 2 c Flour
• 1 t Baking Soda
• ½ t Baking Powder
• 1 t Cinnamon
• ¼ t Nutmeg
• 2 Eggs
• 1/3 c Brown Sugar
• 1 c Sugar
• ½ c Oil
• ¼ c Milk
• 1 t Vanilla
• 1 c Carrots
• Dash of Salt

Cream Cheese Frosting
o 4 oz Cream Cheese
o 1 ¾ c Confectioner’s Sugar
o 1 T Milk

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F and grease your pans. (This recipe can be made in a bundt pan, 2 8-inch layers, cupcakes, loaf pans – you name and it can do it!)
2. Mix together the sugars, oil, milk, eggs, and vanilla.
3. Add in the dry ingredients and blend well.
4. Finally add in the carrots and mix until the carrots are dispersed evenly.
5. Divide the batter evenly into your pan(s) and bake until the edges start to golden and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. (The recipe makes 18 cupcakes if you are so inclined to make cupcakes.)
6. Set on wire racks to cool.
7. While the cake(s) are cooling combine all the frosting ingredients and blend until smooth.
8. Once the cake(s) have cooled, frost and refrigerate until serving.
9. ENJOY!

Seeing doughnuts were requested, I made 6 doughnuts and 12 cupcakes. Therefore the servings size for this batch was 18. The calorie count came in at 230/serving with the frosting and 170/serving without. Compared with 453, I will take it! Please keep in mind if you make a cake you can always make the servings bigger or smaller.

I will now admit that I tasted the batter as well as the finished product. Like with most things, I enjoyed the batter a lot more than the finished product. That being said, I didn’t find the cupcakes to be all that bad. If I was going to make a habit of eating them, however, I would have to use buttercream frosting instead of cream cheese!

All in all I would say that these were a hit! They make EXCELLENT baked doughnuts –just the perfect amount of rise. (I use a Wilton doughnut pan to make my baked doughnuts, it is a great buy for when you want something sweet and want to shake up the standard cupcake/cake format!)

If you give them a try let me know your opinion!

*Sorry for the EXTREME wordiness of this post. I wrote it on a plane and I guess I let my rambling nature take over!