Maida’s Carrot Cake

Thanks for sharing!

Layers of moist carrot cake loaded with goodies and a surprise for a nice deep flavor coated in cream cheese frosting is a cake lover’s dream come true! This recipe is straight from the queen of cakes herself, Maida Heatter.

I figured I might as well start this post with a review from my grandma.  She said this cake was the best carrot cake she’s had and it almost made her purr.  Now that’s saying something!  Enough maybe even. Post finished.

Ha!  Of course I couldn’t let it just go at that.   This month’s bake kind of started with a bit of panic.  

I thought I had the cake baked back in early July.  Something made me look again before I wrote the post and the cake I had baked was nowhere to be seen!  PANIC!

I looked everywhere and I couldn’t find the list I had picked from.  What the heck happened?  

It turns out Facebook on my computer is only showing me one event per group at a time. Who knows why?  

When I looked on my phone I could see the list for SEPTEMBER and there was my cake. I guess I don’t know what month we’re in any more.  

Ahem… I mean I am just really super duper prepared and ahead of the game!

There were some really great sounding cakes in the round up for this month’s Cake Slice choices.  One was really tempting, but had similar flavors to the cake I already baked for next month’s choice.  

I wouldn’t want to wear you out with too many similar delicious cakes.  So I had to give this one a go. It was interesting anyway, there is a tablespoon of cocoa powder in it.  

Yep, in a carrot cake.  It really isn’t enough to taste as chocolate, but I am sure it helps give that dark color and probably adds to the depth of flavor as well.  No matter what it’s purpose, this cake is delicious.

I honestly wasn’t 100% sure how this was going to go.  Maida’s ingredient list asked for 1 lb of carrots or 4 packed cups.

 I was using bits and pieces of bags of carrots, so I opted to measure rather than weigh.  Probably a mistake.  It took a lot more carrots than it should have to make the 4 cups.

 I would guess I used closer to a pound and a half.  It made for a more dense cake than it probably would have been otherwise.  But they baked well, turned out cleanly and ate like a dream.  

I am sure I would have got more rise with fewer carrots, but I’m not sure I wouldn’t do it the same way next time.  I hope somebody else baked this cake so I can see how theirs turned out.

Maida offered instructions on making marzipan carrots from scratch.  It would have been really fun to try, but I didn’t have the time to go for it.  

Nuts are always a pretty garnish, but then half of my guests wouldn’t have even given it a try.  The problem is the cake needed something!  

So, I ground up a few graham cracker and sprinkled them on.  Next time I’d probably make a little more frosting and pipe it on instead, but as always I had a group coming over and more food to make so I went for quick and easy this time!

Thanks for sharing!