Root Vegetables

Well, I did tackle the mystery that is carrot cake this weekend and it was a rather pleasant experience. I like carrots, I like cake, and I LOVE cream cheese icing.

I grated the carrots by hand which wasn't anything compared to the hand-whipped meringue incident, but still, next time I think I'll use the food processor. The recipe calls for 3 cups of grated carrots and after about a two cups I started to hit a rhythm, but then after two and a half cups I started to get cocky and nearly grated my thumb into the batter a few times. Luckily, tragedy was a averted. The carrots turned the batter a gorgeous shade of orange.

While the cakes were baking I made the icing, which was surprisingly easy. Just cream cheese, butter, and powdered sugar. I cut the sugar in half and I still think it was sweet enough. Next time I'd even use less butter. I like my cream cheese icing to have a little bite to it.

My weakness when it comes to cakes (aside from the eating large amounts of them) is that I'm never patient enough to let them cool before icing them. So once the cakes came out of the oven, I placed them on cooling racks, waited approximately 90 seconds and then began icing them.

I dyed a little of the icing orange and green to paint a carrot on the top. Forces me to forfeit labeling it "No artificial colors", but I thought it was cute.

Only today am I realizing that Thanksgiving is this week and I'm having a bit of a panic attack about it. I've really been wanting to try my hand at a sweet potato pie, but I don't know if I want to be trying something new when we've got the whole meal to take care of. If my mom makes it home for Thanksgiving and can work her feast day magic I'll take care of desserts.