Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

It is summer once again! (Even if it isn't much of a difference here in tropical Malaysia.) Anyway, I like the idea of summer, you know, the warmth of the sun on your skin, rays of light glimmering on the surface of the water..Most importantly, summer holidays! What's better than baking a lovely carrot cake to satisfy that hunger in the heat, even if you can't stop eating it and cause you a minor bump on your bikini bod? Well, if that's what matters to you; how much your bones stick out, how bulgy your stomach is, how small your arms are..then you're on the wrong blog site buddy!

On Monday -a very hot Monday afternoon, I sat in the living room watching reruns on the television set which I eventually got bored of and so, decided to make a carrot cake. With the help of one of my favourite food blogs, smitten kitchen, I looked up a recipe and started working on it right away in the kitchen. Yes, I think you should realize that I've got quite an addiction to cream cheese frosting, it's just so..cheesy (:

Here's the funny thing, half way measuring everything, I realized I only had about a tea spoon of cinnamon which led me to drive out to the little indian grocer and buy some cinnamon. To my dismay, they only had cinnamon sticks so I had to do the extra work of pounding my own cinnamon!

'Rehydrating' the raisins in water.

Sugar and oil, and egg.

I grated carrots until my fingers turned orange.

Dry ingredients. (And yes, those are a bag of almonds that I wanted to add into the cake but decided not to in the end cause after pounding and grinding hard cinnamon into powder form, I was far too tired and gave up on the idea of pealing and blending the almonds)

Mix away, then add the carrots and raisins.

Freshly baked carrot cake from the oven (:

To be honest, it wasn't as moist as I would like it to be --I like my cakes really moist--but I still couldn't have enough of the cake! In the morning, during the afternoon and even at night! Yeah, you get where I'm going. I would say a carrot cake is easy to make so try it (: Oh yes, I do realize that the carrot on the cake is pink, well that's simply cause I didn't have orange colouring. Hehe. Since I have my lovely dslr now, be patient and better pictures will come your way when I get used to this complicated gadget. (:

Edited from Smitten Kitchen.

For the original Smitten Kitchen recipe, click here.

Cake:

2 cups all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

2 cups sugar

1 1/4 cups canola oil

4 large eggs

3 cups grated peeled carrots

1/2 cup raisins

Basic steps to follow: Add sugar and oil into a bowl and mix. Add eggs one by one while slowly mixing. Put all other dry ingredients into another bowl and mix. Add the dry ingredients bit by bit into the bowl of mixed sugar and oil and incorporate them together with a spatula. Add in carrots and raisins, mix and put on baking tray lined with parchment paper.

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Cream cheese topping:

400g Cream cheese

220g powdered sugar

115g unsalted butter

1 tsp vanilla extract

Enjoy!