Pineapple Carrot Cake

Hi everybody!! I saw a delicious recipe for carrot cake on The Food Charlatan blog and thought I'd try it, with a few modifications. So, let's start!

First step: contemplation of our goal.

 

So, in the original recipe it calls for two cups toasted pecans, flavored oil (no idea what that is, I just used normal oil), and sour cream (I used Greek yoghurt because we had some).

I also put in twice as much pineapple. That was an accidental modification and I'd recommend just the normal amount of pineapple because then I had to add more flour.

So:

     1 cup white sugar

    1 cup brown sugar

   1 cup oil

     1/4 cup Greek yogurt (I think this really made a difference in the flavor, YUM)

   2 teaspoons vanilla

    4 eggs

    8 ounces crushed pineapple, with juice

Whisk together:

    2 cups flour, spooned and leveled

   2 teaspoons baking soda

   2 teaspoons baking powder

  1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

                                        

Fold in:

   3 cups grated carrots. I had a bag of grated carrots, but it really seemed like the pieces were way too big so we ended up chopping them)

   1 cup chopped walnuts, toasted (I was out of pecans and almost out of walnuts. Next time I'll use the two whole cups because I loved the crunch and there wasn't quite enough for the amount of pineapple.)

For the frosting:
The original recipe calls for 1 cup finely chopped pecans, toasted. I just couldn't see pecans in my frosting so I left them out. :P
3/4 cup (1 and 1/2 sticks) salted butter, soft
1 and 1/2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, soft (12 ounces total)
4 and 1/2 cups powdered sugar
6 tablespoons real maple syrup (I used Grade A)
1 and 1/2 teaspoons maple extract
1/4 teaspoon salt, or to taste
nuts and carrots for garnish

Instructions: preheat over to 350F.

 

 

Whisk all the dry ingredients.

Mix all the wet ingredients. (See all the pineapple? I still didn't clue in. Only later when I had carrot cake soup did I check my can and realize I'd used a 20 oz can instead of 8oz.)

Ednaaaaaaa!!!! She's very energetic in the spring and although it's not quite warm enough to go without a coat, she was ready to work!

 She whipped the frosting up in no time. She's a champ!

Bake for 45-50 minutes in two 9 inch cake pans. Let cool for 20 minutes, carefully release the cake from the pans and flip onto a cooling rack. When perfectly cooled, trim, frost and assemble.

 My little guys wants to decorate with the carrots and since we could just pick them off, I said, "Why not??" There... raw carrots instead of the frosting variety.

 All in all, a delicious recipe! I really liked the pineapple addition, plus the yoghurt. Very moist (probably because too much pineapple, but it still didn't fall apart) and perfect for a fun family dessert!