Carrot Cake

We had some friends over this past weekend for a little get together. We had cookout style food, but I was just baffled at what to make for dessert. I bought a large bag of organic carrots for salad, so I thought I would make carrot cake. I had not made carrot cake for years but thought it is relatively healthy, for a cake ;)

I love any kind of spicy cake with cream cheese icing, and carrot cake has some ingredients that are actually really good for you. I shredded my carrots, used crushed pineapple, and coconut in my cake. A lot of people add nuts and raisins, but I hate raisins, and I knew little kids would be eating the cake, so I left out the nuts. I used cinnamon and of course some freshly grated nutmeg. I also used vegetable oil in it which makes it incredibly moist. I felt like the cake was going to fall apart when I flipped it out of the pan because it was so tender, but it didn't. It held together nicely and stood up to the cream cheese icing as well. It was quite yummy, and the kids loved it :)

Carrots as a main ingredient in sweets dates back to the medieval period when sweeteners were not common and very expensive. Since carrots contain more sugar than most vegetables and were readily available, they were an obvious choice for sweet cakes. Carrot cake did not become available in the US until the 60s when it was a novelty dessert. However, people liked it so much that it became common dessert fare. In 2005 The Food Network listed carrot cake as #5 in the top 5 food fads of the 70s.