carrots aka no fear

people come and people go. 

You have to walk along the dirt road with your hands fully open. Joyfully receiving people as they walk along side you, and joyfully sending them off when the fork in the road comes. 

My sister and her husband bought a one-way ticket to Spain and last night was their good-bye party. 

It would be a cozy dinner with close friends in a warm house and I of course was excited to bring a dessert to brighten the spirits!

Jenna: "Bean!(what i call her) What about a yummy cheese cake for tonight!?"

Jillie: "Ohh yumm! Hmmm or maybe like a carrot cake with really good frosting?"

Jenna:"Yess... Or like a lemon type cheese cake. Like half lemon bar half cheese cake?!"

(ps. We have this really sweet and loving way of talking out our disagreements and desires. It's super cute.)

Jillie: "Ohh that could be good. Or just like a really good dense carrot cake."

Jenna: "...Settled. You're the one leaving. You will eat carrot cake."

For some odd reason in my mind, and I'm convinced, in all of society. Carrot cake has a bad rep of being a really hard cake to pull off. As you can see in the conversation above this false fact was making a big appearance in my mind. 

But I knew this was clearly my time, to prove to myself and all of you that carrot cake is no big thang. And quite delicious. 

There are many many different recipes available through foodgawker.com, pinterent, google, you name it, you can find it! But I was looking for a simple and perfect one. I compared many and decided that I would trust Paula Deen's recipe haha. Here it is: 

Cake-

2 cups AP (all purpose) flour

2 cups sugar

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon salt

4 eggs

1 1/2 cup vegetable oil

3 cups grated carrots

1 1/2 cup chopped pecans (optional) 

Frosting-

2 8oz packages of cream cheese

1 stick salted butter

1 teaspoon of vanilla

1 lb powdered sugar

So lets go through this beyond easy cake:

-You know the drill, turn on your oven to 350 and get out the appropriate ingredients and equipment.

-Cakes: It's all about making that beautiful batter, and what really helps this is having room temperature ingredients. Will it kill you if their not? No! But rule of thumb is they should be because an evenly warmed batter is more congruent than one with cold chunk of butter and cold eggs.

So pull those eggs, butter and cream cheese out ASAP!

-Combine all your dry ingredients into one bowl. Flour, salt, soda, sugar, cinnamon.

-Again, other recipes may have pineapple and other fun ingredients, but this one is simple and sweet. The most difficult step is grating those carrots. Use your preference and grate these the size you want. (Maybe not huge chunks so that your eating a salad) but you have free will here, so grate as you please. Add raisons, coconut, nuts, diamonds, ANYTHING YOU WANT.

- Once your carrots are ready, add the rest of your wet ingredients into your dry bowl. Carrots, oil, and eggs. 

They say the longer this batter sits aka flavors combine the better! So if your super woman and plan to make this ahead of time, that's amazing. 

 

• 
  -Pan these beauties up. I oiled my pans and floured them to ensure NO sticking. And did two rounds in two heart shaped pans. 
• -This recipe calls for 40 minutes of time, but I set mine for 30 and checked from there (naturally :)) I wanted mine nice and moist. 

 -While these treasures were baking I combined my softened butter and cream cheese for the frosting. Gosh people just GUSH over cream cheese frosting, and for good reason. Carrot cake must have its cream cheese partner, no question. 
-Once those are nicely creamed add that vanilla and powder sugar. Frosting is always a look, taste, test, for me personally. I never seem to get it perfectly right from directly following the recipe. 

I just get it to exactly the texture and taste that I want! This may require adding more powder sugar and milk. The more you do it, the better you get. 

- As you can see, I stacked my 4 layers with a medium layer of frosting in the middle.(I like the rustic look of not frosting the sides, so I didn't)

-An amazing trick that I always use when I stack outrageous layers of cakes is either sticking straws or wooden skewers into the cake. I measure the height of the cake by just holding my straw next to it and cut the access. Sticking these directly into the cake (through all the layers) will hold them all in place and no one will ever knowwww

You will just be the magical baker who created it, decorated it presented it. 

They don't have to know about the skewers. Or that you were screaming hysterically during the car ride over because your carrot baby almost fell and died 5 times,and you already suffer from killed cake trauma. 

Nope, a magician never reveals her secrets :)

There is no fear in carrot cake, absolutely none.