Recipe: Carrot Cake with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

Food blogging and recipe documenting is a labor of love that is time intensive and requires much patience. Unfortunately all that flies out the window when it’s 20 minutes until the BC tailgate shows up at the apartment for some pregaming and you are asked to make something delicious. So, I apologize in advance for the lack of documentation.

As I scrambled to my feet, recipes whizzing through my brain I thought, I’ll consult the master – Smitten Kitchen. She always has the answers!

I settled on making her carrot cake with maple cream cheese frosting because I had two of the essential ingredients: a huge bag of carrots and cream cheese. As a chef and baker I like being able to take two random ingredients and be able to logically combine them into something delicious on the fly. I’d like to think I’d rock at Chopped. But really, I’d probably get something like caramel sauce, cantaloupe, and tripe and then start crying.

Anyhoo, Smitten Kitchen’s recipe is easy, quick, and delicious. The only thing I modified was the sugar: I ramped 2 cups back to just one. Well and also that she made cupcakes and I just made one big cake. Follow everything else exactly and you will end up with a moist, delicately sweet, earthy cake with the decadence of a fall-tinged cream cheese frosting. This is my go to carrot cake recipe from now on, no foolin’.