Carrot Cake

Life is short - eat cake for breakfast!

I made this cake today, for a friend who requested the recipe, and it's a good thing I did, because the item I WAS going to tell you about, turned out to be a disaster from, well, you know where.   Spinach Gnocchi.  I can't even say it without choking on it...gn-yacck-i.  When I went to boil the first round, the boiling water blasted them to smithereens, like the space shuttle Challenger leaving the atmosphere.  Big mess. Start over.  Did not lose my head and salvaged the rest, but alas, after all that, they were just okay at best.  Actually, they gagged me.  And I'm only going to share recipes that get people EXCITED...like YES, Give me some of that NOW!!!  So, thank goodness for this carrot cake!  It qualifies.

I can't take any credit for the recipe.  It is (pretty much) straight from the Silver Palate Cookbook (1982).  I've made it probably 50 times in the previous 25 years.  Anyone who knows me, knows I love dessert for breakfast, and sometimes I make this cake and freeze pieces of it, just so I can have them in the morning.  Day after day....until my pants don't fit anymore.   It is a dense, moist cake, full of things to wrap your taste buds around.

If you make it in layers, there is just a little too much batter for 9" rounds.  Withhold a cup.  Also, if it sighs in the middle, don't despair, just fill in the depression with the frosting.  No one will notice and it still always tastes GREAT.  This is Scott's favorite.

Carrot Cake

3 cups flour

3 cups sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon baking soda

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1 1/2 cups vegetable oil

4 large eggs, lightly beaten

1 tablespoon vanilla

1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts

1 1/2 cups shredded coconut

1 1/3 cups pureed cooked carrots

3/4 cup drained crushed pineapple (squeezed dry)

Cream Cheese Frosting (recipe follows)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a 13x9 inch pan.  You may use 2 9" rounds, but you must then line bottom of pans with wax paper, and then butter them.

Sift dry ingredients into a large bowl.  Add oil, eggs and vanilla.  Beat well (wooden spoon is fine).  Add walnuts, carrots and pineapple.  Pour batter into the prepared pans.  Set on the middle rack of the oven and bake for 40 minutes, then start checking every 5 minutes until it springs back when touched and a cake tester inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Cool on a cake rack for 3 hours.  Frost as desired with Cream Cheese Frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

12 ounces cream cheese, softened 

6 tablespoons butter, softened

1 box confectioner's sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cream together the cheese and butter in a mixing bowl.  Slowly beat in the confectioner's sugar.  Stir in vanilla.

Frost the cake!