Carrot Zucchini Cake

Another respite from “heavy” dialogs and blogs, today I want to share a bakery treat on my first attempt at it: Carrot-Zucchini Cake with Pineapple-Pecan Frosting.  The picture I got online looked really delicious, and mine tasted as good as that one looked, but not being a cake decorator, my creation looked pretty miserable.  But as fast as it went down I was proud of how it came out!

Again, I start with everything on the counter to make sure I don’t need to run to the store:
Ingredients:

  

Dry Mix	Wet Mix	Frosting
1 cup brown sugar	1-½ cups butter	16 ounces powdered sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour	4 large eggs	1 cup crushed pineapple
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon	1 cup grated carrot	8 ounces cream cheese
1 teaspoon salt	1 cup grated zucchini	¾ cup chopped pecans
1 teaspoon baking soda	½ cup honey	¼ cup butter
		2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Mix all the dry ingredients in a medium bowl and set aside.  When I do this again, I will add ¼-½ cup of finely chopped pecans for the added nutty flavor.

Grate the carrots and zucchini. I grated the zucchini a little bit coarse and changed wheels to grate the carrots finer. Next time I will grate both with the finer wheel or even use a food processor, although the texture came out okay.  Someone thought it had raisins, but it was just some zucchini bits.

Preheat the oven to 350⁰F (175⁰C). Beat the eggs in a large bowl on low speed or hand mix adding the softened butter.  (Don’t whip the eggs!)  Add in the honey, carrots and zucchini and beat at a medium speed.  

Stir in the Dry Mix gradually, beating on medium speed until the batter is smooth, scraping down the sides of the bowl.

Divide the batter evenly into pans, filling each about one half full.  I only had one “real” cake pan, but I had another of stiff foil, and I used a pie tin for the “top pan.”  (Reminder to self: Buy MORE cake pans!! 🙄) Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the deepest part of the pan comes out clean.  

Cool the baked cakes for at least five minutes and invert onto wire rack.  (Doh!  I forgot to grease the pans 😌, so I had to be tricky to get the cakes out of the smaller pans.  The silicone-coated one came out fine.)

While the cake is baking there is plenty of time to mix up the ingredients for the frosting; just dump them all together and blend thoroughly.  Or you can make the icing while the cakes cool, because you must let them cool to room temperature to spread the icing.  After mixing, refrigerate to get the icing to stand up a little.

Spread the icing on the first layer and repeat, but do a neater job than I did.  It still tasted great, though the presentation left something to be desired.  Maybe next time?  Actually, the way it turned out, I think I could just use three 9″ pie tins.

And before presenting to our Labor Day friends, I laid bunches of pecan halves all over the top for an added treat and to draw attention away from the sorry look. 😏 Bon appétit!