Carrot Cake

Carrot cake is such a great dessert. Even though it's all in my head, knowing I'm eating vegetables in my cake is such a nice concept. Cakes, however, are never easy to bake. There are so many different factors that effect how a cake will turn out. Over the years I have learned that carrot cakes are one of the easiest and most likely to turn out well.

CARROT CAKE

4 Eggs

1 1/4 c Vegetable Oil

2 c White Sugar

2 tsp Vanilla

2 c Flour

2 tsp Baking Soda

2 tsp Baking Powder

1/2 tsp Salt

2 tsp Ground Cinnamon

3 c Grated Carrots

1 c Chopped Pecans

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and grease and 9 x 13in baking pan.

2. Beat together Eggs, Oil, Vanilla, and Sugar. Mix together Flour, Baking Soda, Baking Powder, and Salt. Slowly add the dry ingredients into the Egg mixture. Fold in Carrots and Pecans.

3. Pour into pan and bake for about 40 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for at least 10 minutes and turn out onto a cooling rack.

4. After the cake is completely cooled, frost with your favorite frosting!

I love this recipe! It is so, so, so easy and leaves you with a wonderful and delicious cake. A few simple changes to this recipe and you'll have yourself an even healthier treat.

First, I added an extra 1/4 c Flour, but only because of high altitude. This helps keep the cake from being to spongey and dense.

Second, I like to sift all the dry ingredients together before mixing them into the Eggs. This helps give the cake a little more assistance in not turning out to dry and dense.

Third thing I did was to decrease the amount of White Sugar to 1 cup and then add 1/2 a cup of Brown Sugar as well. Brown sugar has a stronger flavor so you can get more taste out of a lesser amount.

Last but not least, I added a few extras. I added 1/4 cup of ground Flaxseeds to boost the nutritional profile. There was no major flavor change with this at all. Since the recipe already calls for nuts, the flavor of the Flaxseed just blended right in.