Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting for Carlos! Colorful and Cool for a Celebration! (Apparently “C” is the Letter of the Day!)

I have never been particularly fond of carrot cakes.  I actually have a natural aversion to eating carrot cake because they frequently include walnuts, to which I am very allergic.  I recently had an excuse though to make a Madhu-friendly, nut-free carrot cake — my friend Carlos had a surprise birthday party thrown in his honor, and there is nothing he likes more than carrot cake (noting of course though that Carlos is an enthusiastic consumer of other MadhuKnitsandCooks.com products).  

In making this carrot cake, I successfully stuck to my new-ish pledge of trying to use my cookbooks instead of the Internet for recipe and technique ideas.  I used my Gourmet Cookbook, which had a recipe from Felix Papadakis, and the process and result could not have made me happier.  The recipe was incredibly easy for a carrot cake novice and I only made a few ingredient changes — I omitted both the walnuts and the optional raisins, and used unsweetened shredded coconut instead of the recipe's sweetened flaked coconut.  I also followed the directions pretty closely, though used two 8 by 8-inch square pans instead of two 9-inch round pans to adjust to what I had available.  Using the 8-inch square pans required me to bake the cakes for a few minutes longer than what was called for by the recipe.  Finally, I probably should have chilled the frosting for longer in the fridge (I had cooled it for only an hour or so after making it).  It has been insanely hot in D.C. lately so the frosting at room temperature was a bit tricky to use, which it made it more difficult to frost the cake.  But, all in all, it was a really simple (and quick) cake to bake and assemble.

At the surprise birthday party, I am pleased to say that the cake was not only a big hit with Carlos, the birthday celebrator:

But also his fiancee, and the many other friends they had in attendance.  While I have avoided carrot cakes pretty zealously in the past, this is a recipe I will not shy away from making in the future, even for non-carrot cake enthusiasts!