The first carrot cake eve made – 2002

Lenny Loves carrot cake. I make it, almost every year for his birthday. The first year was the funniest as I searched high and low for a recipe and finally settled on a Barefoot one. Then it had crumbs in the frosting as I did not “dust off” the sides first. Then it was so warm that the cake top was sliding off and it was more like the tilted cake. Not very pretty but it was good!

Thanks to the Daring Bakers and Tuesdays With Dorie, my baking skills are a lot better now!

Back in April, the TWD crowd were busy baking Bill’s Big Carrot Cake. I opted out of this particular week since it was his fav and because he birthday was in July and I wanted to save it for then. I made it last week for him before we headed back East.

When I started mixing the recipe I was leary on the amount of carrots and once I added them to the batter, I was even more leary. It seemed that it was on the road to becoming a big fat chewy power bar, you know the ones, where you chew and chew and you never can choke it down. The frosting was not your typical cream cheese frosting either, this was a lot lighter, not over the top sweet. In honor of  Andrea’s GYO event, I used our sweet little Meyer Lemon!  The event is being hosted for the end of July, by warm and generous Jai & Bee over at Jugalbandi.   I finally got to use this little Meyer Lemon, that hung on our tree for 8 months, fell off and then sat in the window sill for 4 months before turning yellow. Much to my surprise it was not dry and bitter; it, was incredibly sweet, slightly tart, a beautiful creamy lemon color and tasted and smelled like the first spring day! Definitely, was a perfect marriage between all the carrot goodness, coconut, pecans, raisins and love that went into the cake!

Once again, Dorie proved me wrong; Thank You Dorie! This cake is so moist it is almost dripping in sweet sugary carrot juice. All I can say is, “move over Barefoot, there is a new girl in town”.

Happy Birthday, Baby!