Carrot Cake recipe

I do have a Thrifty Threads post ready, but the blog that it links to is having server problems, and we don't know when they'll be fixed, so I'm disappointed but it will have to be put off. If I can post it tomorrow, I will. Otherwise, it will have to wait until next Thursday. So since I can't give you Thrifty Threads, I'll give you a recipe instead.

A few weeks ago I had some carrots that were getting a bit limp, so I acted like a housewife and cooked them, mashed them up, and baked some carrot cake. See what I mean by acted like a housewife? I acted resourcefully, I think. The carrots were about to go bad, so I thought of another use for them.

One of my readers asked me to post the recipe, so here goes. I used one of my favorite cookbooks, The Silver Palate, by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins, but mine is a plainer version of theirs. It's like a super simple quickbread.

3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
3 cups sugar
1 tsp salt
1 T baking soda
1 T cinnamon
1 1/2 cups corn oil
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 T vanilla
1 1/3 cups pureed cooked carrots

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease pans (loaf pan, mini-loaves, or layer cake)
2. Sift dry ingredients and add oil, eggs, and vanilla. Fold in carrots.
3. Pour into pans and bake 30-35 minutes, until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
4. Cool on a rack for 3 hours and frost with cream cheese frosting.

To make cream cheese frosting, cream together 8 ounces cream cheese at room temperature and 1/2 cup butter. Slowly sift in 3 cups confectioner's sugar and keep beating until free of lumps. Stir in 1 tsp vanilla, and juice of 1/2 lemon(optional).

The recipe in the book calls for 1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts, 3/4 cup drained crushed pineapple, and 1 1/2 cups shredded coconut to be mixed into the batter. That sounded like a little too much for our taste, so I left those ingredients out. I might try the coconut next time though.

My husband scarfed this down, after first telling me he didn't really like carrot cake. Hmmm.