I really like carrot cake, it's probably my favorite kind of cake after chocolate. I decided to make one from scratch last Saturday and used a recipe from AllRecipes.com. It said it would make two 10" round layers, and I only have 9" pans, so I modified the recipe and cut it to 12 servings instead of 16. It was quite a lot of work, especially shredding the carrots. That part alone took over an hour. My cousin said I need to invest in a food processor, which is definitely true.

After shredding the carrots, the rest was pretty easy. I beat the eggs, added sugar and oil, mixed in the flour/spice mixture and added the walnuts. I was pouring it in the pans when Troy realized I hadn't added the raisins, which would have been disastrous. Not really, but it would have been irritating to do all that work and forget an ingredient. So I mixed them in as best I could once the batter was in the pans.

I baked it for the original amount of time, not realizing that I should reduce the cook time because I reduced the recipe size. It came out a little overcooked and crusty, which was disappointing at the time.

I made my own cream cheese frosting, which was much easier than I thought. It only requires butter, cream cheese, powdered sugar, and a little vanilla. I went ahead and iced the cake and we both had a piece. It was ok, but not as good as I was hoping for.

So I covered it and put it in the fridge. Then on Sunday we had some more of it and it was actually a lot better. I guess the icing helped soften it and keep some moisture in it. It's actually pretty good. Perhaps I'll go to all the trouble again and reduce the cook time next time. It wasn't the best carrot cake I've had, but it was comparable.