Carrot Cake - trying a new recipe

"Sinfully Delicious" Carrot Cake - made November 13, 2013 from Lou Lou Girls

in the light box, with flash

So, before I aborted the Whole 30 diet before the 30 days were up, I bought a huge pack of organic carrots at Costco.  Even eating one a day (and they were really sizable carrots), I wasn't going to be able to go through them all unless I transformed into a rabbit with an appetite on steroids.  I gave half of them to my parents but I still had too many to eat at my one-a-day pace.  So a new carrot cake recipe to try comes to the rescue.

I love carrot cake.  I don't make it often because carrots are a pain to grate and I grate them the old-fashioned way with my almost-falling-apart-but-not-enough-to-justify-buying-a-new-one grater (yeah, I'm cheap when I feel like it). Plus carrot cake isn't very healthy because of the oil in the batter and the cream cheese frosting.  Much as I don't care for cream cheese, carrot cake should only be eaten with cream cheese frosting.  It's an unwritten rule in baking. One which I adhere to so much that I had to make a special trip after work to Costco to buy a block of cream cheese. Okay, it wasn't so special since Costco is literally on my way home from work so I stopped by after I had run at the gym.  Only, you know how you go to Costco and remember 3 other things you need?  I was so intent on buying the other stuff "while I was there anyway" that, yep, I walked out of Costco, got home, put away what I'd bought and realized I'd forgotten to get the cream cheese. Oy. So I stopped off again the next night to buy it.

in the light box, without flash

Baking cakes on weeknights is tricky for me because I have to get whatever I make mixed, in the oven, baked, out, cooled and frosted in time for me to get to bed at a decent hour.  I rarely bake a cake when I work late, run errands, go out or when I workout after work unless I'm working out while it's in the oven. There just isn't enough time.  For this particular cake, I threw together the dry ingredients in a bowl before I left for work so that once I got home, it was an easy matter of peeling and grating the carrots and mixing all of the ingredients together while my oven preheated. The frosting is easy to make once the cake is out of the oven and cooling. I frosted it before I went to bed then cut it into squares before I left for work in the morning.  You never want to cut a cake or brownies until the last minute before serving or the cut edges will dry out.

Overall, I thought this cake had a great texture (soft and fluffy) and the flavor was good but what kept it from being great is I could taste the oil.  At first I worried that my oil might've gone rancid as that's usually when I can taste oil.  But I checked the bottle and nope, it's still good for another eight months.  Then I thought maybe this recipe uses more oil than typical but I compared it against my favorite carrot cake recipe and they both use 1 cup of oil, albeit the other ingredients are in different proportions. So I'm not quite sure what it is.  The cake is still good but it doesn't depose Jim Fobel's recipe as my favorite.  I still have a few more carrots left so I think I will keep experimenting with new carrot cake recipes a couple more times.

my camera isn't good enough to take great pictures without natural light

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
4 eggs
1 cup oil
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar, packed
2 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups carrots, grated (I used 1 large and 1 medium carrot)

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour the pans that you will be using.
2. In a bowl, combine eggs, oil, butter, sugars, and vanilla until light and fluffy.
3. Mix together in a bowl, flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and mix for about 2 minutes.
5. Add the grated carrots. You can add nuts and raisins if you want.
6. Pour the batter into the cake pans and bake 45 to 50 minutes. To check to see if its done, insert toothpick and if it comes out clean, its done.
7. Cool completely before you frost the cake. 

Frosting1 stick of butter (4 ounces)
1 package of cream cheese (8 ounces)
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 cups powdered sugar

1. In a bowl, beat together cream cheese, butter, and vanilla until creamy. Add powder sugar and beat until fluffy. Be sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat a little longer.