On Saturday my coworker and roommate reminded me that there’s a CFI community potluck on Wednesday! It’s like the best day all month, with all sorts of tasty noms for eating and a fun crowd to hang out with. He plans to make pork and vegetarian dumplings, although I can’t believe he’d want to spend so much time pinching so many little dumplings closed. I have little cooking experience (or interest), so I usually bake desserts instead. For some reason, I’m completely willing to spend hours baking—I even enjoy it!—but cooking for more than 20 minutes seems like an unnecessary chore.
There were leftover carrots in the fridge from Christmas weekend, so I decided to whip up carrot cake with some tweaks to the recipe. Because I know there are raisin-haters out there, I made one batch with raisins and one without.
The cake with raisins is two layers (nine-inch rounds) topped with cream cheese frosting from scratch, chopped pecans on the sides, and some almonds thrown on for decoration. I got impatient so didn’t smooth out the top as well as I could have. (It still tastes fine, I’m sure.)
With the raisin-free batter, I made cupcakes and mini-loaves. The cupcakes are topped with frosting, a sprinkle of cinnamon, a slight dusting of salt, and pecans:
Carrot cake gets better after sitting for a few days, so I’ll stick everything in the fridge at work tomorrow. And since for the next two days I’ll be looking forward to eating cake on Wednesday, it’ll taste even yummier then. Sweet!
I need a reason to come and visit CFI-HQ before it’s all gone. Wait, I need a means of transportation, too. 🙁
Doods, just to let you know, the carrot cake is damn delicious. I’m eating a second piece RIGHT NOW. Yum! Two thumbs up to the recipe.
That looks amazing! I may have to venture CFI-ward Wednesday to taste (and bring something to share, of course).
That recipe I linked to is really good! Here are the tweaks I made:
– Replaced 3/4 cup oil with 1/2 cup applesauce and 1/4 cup oil
– Replaced 1 1/2 cup white sugar with 3/4 cup brown sugar and 1/2 cup white sugar (slightly less than called for, but the applesauce was sweetened)
– Replaced 1 cup walnuts with 1/2 cup walnuts and 1/2 cup pecans
– I added almond extract to the batter and to the frosting
– I used extra carrots and a little more cinnamon
The crushed pineapple and the coconut make it interesting. I gave loaves of carrot cake (and apple spice cake) to coworkers for the holidays. Everyone loved it!
Mmmm… Carrot cake. *salivate*