Make My Day Camp: Carrot Cake

Wednesday, February 22, 2023

Carrot Cake

I made this for Ray's birthday last August and am just now remembering to blog it - I doctored a cake mix and it turned out so good. Dave doesn't usually get to eat carrot cake because it usually has nuts but I made this one without and he said 'I don't know what it's supposed to taste like, but this is great'. I don't like regular raisins so (selfishly) added golden! I didn't take good pictures, in real life this looked very pretty and more carrot-cake like - it wasn't as drab as these photos...

Mix together in a big bowl and bake according to package directions for (2) 9-inch cake pans:

carrot cake mix
4 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup whole milk
8 oz. crushed pineapple with juice
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1/2 cup golden raisins
3/4 cup grated carrots
1 t. vanilla
pinch of coarse salt

cream cheese frosting:

8 oz. softened cream cheese
1 stick softened unsalted butter
pinch of salt
1 t. vanilla
3 cups powdered sugar

In a mixer beat together softened cream cheese, softened unsalted butter, a pinch of salt, 1 teaspoon of vanilla and 3 cups of powdered sugar until smooth and spreadable - if it's too soft add additional sugar to firm it up.

Note: don't add salt if you are using salted butter. To soften butter in the microwave I cut in pieces and put in microwave safe bowl, microwave at 50% power for 1 minute. You don't want to melt the butter though so watch it - the size of your microwave might change the time it takes to soften.

To assemble: put a dab of frosting on a cake board to keep the cake from moving around while you're frosting it. Place one layer on the board, frost the top of it, add the second layer and frost the entire cake. You could split the 2 layers in half and make a total of 4 layers, but go easy with the frosting in between the layers if you do that - it'll be very sweet and you might need to make extra to fill all the layers.