Seriously Moist Carrot Cake

As Jack Kerouac wrote, "The prettiest girls in the world live in Des Moines." In addition to being the prettiest, we also bake the bombest Mostly Vegan Carrot Cakes. By we I mean Neena. Maura found the recipe, hosted the party, and kept her veggie-phile cat out of the salad (mostly). Neena did the baking in a little black dress that was soon covered in flour. She even hand-smooshed the pineapple into the batter due to lack of baking equipment. I shaved chocolate on top to make it aesthetically appealing. This recipe worked! Even my grandparents liked it the next day. With the exotic spices and everything. The frosting is pretty runny so this cake has kind of a homey appearance but the taste is delicious.

Here's the recipe. Enjoy the funny notes from Maura.

AMAZING CARROT CAKE

Makes 1 - 3 layer cake (we did two 8x8 pans which worked perfectly)

Prep time - 30 minutes (who knows if those things are ever really accurate, especially if you're distractedly cooking with friends & wine!)

Cook time - 40 minutes

Ingredients:

• 2 cups white flour
• 1 1/2 t. baking powder
• 1 t. baking soda
• 1 1/2 c sugar
• 1/2 t. salt
• 1 t. cinnamon
• 1/2 t. ground ginger (I think it would be fun to try it with freshly grated ginger... or freshly cut ginger chunks. Yum... ginger...)
• 2 c grated carrots (I think it could have even used more, if carroty carrot cake is your thing)
• 1 c chopped pineapple (we used canned, worked swimmingly)
• 1/2 c canola oil
• 1/4 c applesauce
• 3 large egg whites
• 1 c walnut pieces
• 1/4 non-dairy milk (we used vanilla almond milk - yummier and more creamy than soy/rice milk)
• 1 T. apple cider vinegar
• 1 t. vanilla

We mixed it up a tad with the spices (always add more spice to any recipe, right?!) - added cardamom... yum!

Prep:

• Preheat oven to 350. Lightly oil and flour your pans, tapping out excess flour
• In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, cinnamon (and cardamom!), ground ginger and salt
• In food processor (or by hand if you're cheap/ghetto like me and don't even have an electric hand-held mixer thing) combine pineapple, canola oil, applesauce, egg whites, non-dairy milk of choice, apple cider vinegar and vanilla, until well combined.
• Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and stir and such
• Stir in carrots and walnuts
• Pour batter into prepared pan. BAKE!... until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, yadda yadda, about 40 minutes.

VEGAN CREAM CHEESE FROSTING

Makes about 2 cups

Prep time - 5 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup dairy-free soy margarine (Willow Run, Earth Balance, etc)
• 1 8-oz tub of dairy-free cream cheese (such as Tofutti, or that other brand we used whose name I always forget)
• 4 cups powdered sugar

Prep:

• In a large mixing bowl (using an electric mixer if you're snazzy enough to own one), blend all the ingredients until creamy & fluffy - about 5 minutes
• Use mixture to frost stuff, like cakes! May be stored up to 1 day (or maybe longer) in an airtight container in the fridge, until ready to use.