Carrot Cake, Take Two

Yeah, to make a simple carrot cake, that I have even made before, it took me TWO tries. Whaaa?

It was one of my friend’s birthdays on Saturday, and she loved the carrot cake that I had made for Thanksgiving here – it’s just not your normal run of the mill sort of cake found in these parts (and it doesn’t even require brown sugar!). So I busted out the same recipe I used before, thinking how easy peasy this would be…I’d just bake it in a 9X13 pan because that’s easier to serve a crowd with than a round layer cake.

After leaving it in the oven for over an hour, then letting it sit for like 30 more minutes, I had the oddest icky sticky mess of cake that I had ever seen. What on earth had gone wrong? Then I decided to read back through the comments, of which there are hundreds, only to find that most people had cut the amount of oil back to a cup or less (when it called for a cup and a half). Grrrrr. I probably did that last time. So back I went for another pound of carrots at the grocery store.

Over-oily, sticky disaster. I even thought maybe I could salvage it with some sort of cake ball, but it was too oily to even do that!

This time it looked MUCH better. On top of cutting back the oil, I also squeezed quite a bit of water from the shredded carrots, toasted the walnuts and removed the paper-y skin (no pecans here), and practically tripled the spices. I made the 9X13 pan, but was afraid it was a little much, so I made another smaller one that I will leave for the bday girl to enjoy all on her own.

Thank heavens. Two flops in one day would have been too much.

As far as the cream cheese frosting, I used a stick of butter, 8 oz of cream cheese, and heaven only knows how much powdered sugar. Enough to make it the consistency I was looking for. And voila. People were still talking about the “bizcocho” the next day. Success once again.