Recipe: Carrot Cake

Someone brought in some carrot cake to work the other day. It was moist and savory with a rich cream cheese frosting — it was some of the best carrot cake I’ve ever had. I was a bit sad that I wouldn’t be able to ask for the recipe, as it just appeared anonymously in the break area.

Luckily, the cake came up in some water-cooler conversation and just I happened to be talking with the person who baked it. She happily agreed to e-mail the recipe to me:

Carrot Cake

Ingredients:

• 3 cups grated carrots
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1 1/4 cups oil
• 1 tsp. vanilla

Preparation:

Cook at 350 for 30 min — if you do it in a cake pan — I end up cooking it for at least 45 minutes, but check it at 30 min, then every 10 min afterwards. [Yeah, that’s exactly how she wrote it. As you’ll notice, she doesn’t specify a pan-size, but I recall that it may have been 13 x 9 (?)]

Frosting:

• 1 package cream cheese, softened
• 1 stick butter, softened
• 1 16 oz box of powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla

Cream butter and cream cheese together, add vanilla, slowly add powdered sugar.