Holiday Carrot Cake
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Today is the last day of my blogoversay week. 🙁 It has been a fun week! I had a great party week with all of you. I am ending it with one of my favorite desserts, Carrot Cake! Now, I know right now is not what you would consider the “holiday’s” and the cake has the title Holiday Carrot Cake, but this cake is great for anytime of year. It would be great for Mother’s Day. I had this cake at my in-laws at Christmas and had to have the recipe. It came from the Nov. 29, 2009 issue of Family Circle.
The holiday carrot cake is delicious and the frosting is to die for! The original recipe calls for dried cranberries, but my in-laws used raisins. This is what I also did. I am usually not a big fan of raisins, but I love it in this cake. The cake is suppose to be four layers, but I was too afraid the cake was going to fall apart when I made mine so I only did two layers. Part of my issue may have been due to the fact that instead of doing two nine inch rounds I used my Demarle large round mold (which is 9.5 inches) and did the whole cake in that and just cooked it longer. It probably would have helped to refrigerate or freeze the cake a bit before trying to cut it into layers.
Holiday Carrot Cake
Real Mom Kitchen
Ingredients
- 2 ½ cups flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 ½ tsp pumpkin pie spice
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 cup sugar
- ¾ cup brown sugar
- 1 ½ cups vegetable oil I use canola
- 4 eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 3 medium-size carrots peeled and shredded (about 2 cups)
- ¾ cup walnuts chopped
- ½ cup sweetened dried cranberries I used raisins
Frosting:
- 2 8 oz pkgs cream cheese, at room temperature
- ½ cup butter softened
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 3 cups powdered sugar
- cranberries and walnuts for garnish (I just used walnuts)
Instructions
- Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Coat two 9 x 2-inch round cake pans with cooking spray. Line bottoms with parchment paper. Coat paper with spray.
- Cake: In medium-size bowl, whisk flour, baking soda, baking powder, pumpkin pie spice and salt. In large bowl, beat sugars, oil, eggs and vanilla on medium speed until blended. On low, beat in flour mixture until smooth. Stir in carrots, nuts and cranberries. Divide batter between pans, spreading evenly.
- Bake at 350 degrees for 42 to 44 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool on wire rack 10 minutes. Turn out and cool completely.
- Frosting: In large bowl, beat cream cheese, butter and vanilla until creamy. Gradually beat in confectioners sugar until smooth.
- With serrated knife, cut each cake horizontally in half. (I didn't cut the layers in half). Place one layer on cake plate and spread with 1 cup frosting. Repeat two more times with layers and frosting. Place remaining layer, cut-side down, on top and spread with remaining frosting. Garnish with berries and nuts. Serves16.
This is the original photo from this post. The above photo was updated in December 2017.
