Easy Carrot Cake

Last week we got together with family and it was suggested that I bring a cake or something sweet.

So...I did both!

I had seen somewhere that a creative blogger had created an Easter Egg Fruit Salad.  (Sorry I don't recall my inspiration source!)  So, I decided to give that a try.  It was easy and turned out beautifully!

Thinking of Easter and spring and bunnies, I decided to make my cake something that I haven't baked in a long, long time... Carrot Cake!

Look at all that decadent deliciousness!  

Doesn't the orange-y beautifulness of those carrots look great?

Ingredients:

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
4 large eggs
1/4 cup applesauce
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups grated carrots
1 cup pecans
2 tubs cream cheese frosting

Instructions:

First, I thought you needed to enjoy a beautiful photo of the rich, orange carrots pre-cake style!

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

And...another look at those beautiful carrots!

• Grease and flour two nine-inch round cake pans and set aside.

• Using the food processor, grate the carrots to a rough chop.

See, they are still beautiful even after they are grated to a rough chop!

Another angle of that beautifulness!

• In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt till combined and set aside.
• Beat the sugar and oil till smooth in the bowl of an electric mixer.
• Add the eggs one at a time and beat well.
• Stir in the applesauce and vanilla.
• With the mixer on low, slowly add the flour mixture to the egg mixture.

• Stir in the carrots and nuts.

Again, don't those carrots just look beautiful?

Even before it is baked, this cake looks absolutely beautiful!

• Divide the batter evenly between prepared cake pans.
• Bake about 40 minutes or till a tester comes out with only a few small moist crumbs attached.
• Let cakes cool in pans on wire rack for about fifteen minutes
• Carefully turn cakes out of pans onto wire racks to finish cooling completely.
• When cakes are completely cool, set one of the cakes rounded top side down in the center of an heirloom round ironstone platter that you inherited from your Granny.  (If you don't have said platter, any beautiful round cake plate will do.)
• Plop a couple of tablespoons of the frosting onto the cake and spread it out to where it is just beginning to ooze over the edge of the cake.
• Place the other cake on top of this layer of the frosting with the rounded top up.  
• Spread frosting around the sides of the cake.
• Then, cover the top of the cake with frosting blending it down to the edge of the sides.

Enjoy each morsel of yummy, chewy, goodness!