Carrot Cake Birthday Cake

Rob's birthday was last week (Happy Birthday!!) and this past weekend I made him a carrot cake. I made this same recipe last year for his birthday but this time I wanted to make it a little bit healthier. I used mostly whole wheat flour for the cake and for the frosting I used non-fat cream cheese. Unfortunately I forgot an important ingredient...the oil. I didn't realize this until it was almost finished baking so there was nothing I could do about it. Ooops. Surprisingly though, it tastes pretty good. It's just slightly dry. But I recommend that if you're making this recipe it's probably best not to forget the oil.

INGREDIENTS

2 eggs
1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup light brown sugar

1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups grated carrot
2 tablespoons orange juice

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup whole wheat flour

1/4 all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

DIRECTIONS

In a medium bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg.

In a separate bowl beat together the eggs and sugar until creamy. Stir in the vegetable oil, carrots, orange juice and vanilla and mix well. Combine with dry ingredients and mix.

Heat oven to 350 degrees F and grease a 9 inch baking pan. I love parchment paper for recipes like this. You can do this and it's super easy to get the cake out. Pour mixture into pan and bake for 25-30 minutes.

This particular time I made it in a loaf form using a standard bread loaf pan. If you do that, keep it in the oven another 5-10 minutes when baking.

Now it's frosting time!

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup fat-free cream cheese softened
4 tablespoon margarine
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups powdered sugar

DIRECTIONS

Mix the cream cheese and margarine. Add the vanilla then add the powdered sugar little by little while mixing until you reach the desired consistency. Wait until the cake has completely cooled then frost.

Instead of doing the typical "Happy Birthday Rob" on the cake I decided to make little carrots. I just mixed some of the extra frosting with food coloring and put it in little plastic Ziploc bags and snipped the tips and tah-dah....

Birthday carrots!