Sweet Melissa Sundays: Carrot Cake (Carrot Loaf?)

Carrot cake is definitely underrated. I was reminded of that after trying this week's recipe for Sweet Melissa Sundays, Carrot Cake, chosen by Julie of A Little Bit of Everything. I thought this recipe came out really quite delicious, and it was a cinch to make. The most time consuming part was shredding the carrots, and with a food processor that took all of 2 minutes.



My only changes to the recipe as it was written in the Sweet Melissa Baking Book was that I halved the recipe and made it in a loaf pan, instead of making the full two layer cake. It came out to be a short little loaf cake... I probably could have fit the entire recipe in the 9 x 5 loaf pan, but the halved version is a lot more appropriate for a two person household. :)



I also omitted the walnuts, and opted for a vanilla buttercream instead of the orange cream cheese frosting she recommends (Call me crazy but I'm not a big fan of cream cheese frosting).



This recipe went over well in this house. We've given pieces out to several people and it got rave reviews. It came out very moist and flavorful, and not at all too dense. There was a lot of cinnamon in the recipe, but I thought it created a great flavor - not overwhelming at all! And I was glad I changed it out for the Vanilla Buttercream - it turned out to be a great combination.

Thanks for picking this week's recipe, Julie! It was a total success. Be sure to see Julie's blog here for the recipe, and visit the blog roll to see how it went for the other SMS bakers.

Whole Wheat Carrot No-Raisin Muffins

I hate seeing food thrown out. I just feel wasteful when I have to throw something away because it has gone bad. Rather than let that happen with my left over ricotta cheese, I decided to use it in a recipe that Daniel could eat for breakfast. I searched for a muffin recipe that used ricotta, but couldn't find anything that didn't require lemon juice or zest. When I came across a recipe for Whole Wheat Carrot raisin muffins, I remembered the long-ignored whole wheat flour in the pantry, and the left over carrots from the soup I made two days ago. Perfect! Except this recipe didn't call for ricotta... nor did I have a few other things on the list of ingredients. Instead of hopping in the car and driving the .2 miles from here to the grocery store, I decided to manipulate the original recipe to fit what I had on hand. Daniel doesn't love raisins, I left them out. I substituted my ricotta where the recipe called for yogurt (and since I only had half of the amount they called for, I halved the recipe). I had no honey, no lemon juice. So basically... here is what I did instead... something rather different.



Whole Wheat Carrot No-Raisin Muffins
1 C Whole Wheat Flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg
1/2 C Light Maple Syrup (instead of honey...I looked this one up, apparently this is a normal susbtitute)
1/2 C Ricotta cheese (instead of Yogurt)
1/4 C olive oil
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp Key lime juice (hey, it was all I had)
5/8 C shredded carrots, lightly packed
Plus, I added 1/4 C sugar because 1 reviewer said it needed more

Sift together the dry ingredients in one bowl.
In another bowl, mix the egg, syrup, ricotta cheese, oil, lime juice & vanilla.
Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients - don't over mix. Fold in carrots.
Fill paper-lined or greased cupcake tins to 2/3 full and bake at 350 for ~ 17-18 minutes, or until toothpick comes out with just a few crumbs on it. Cool 5 minutes before removing from pans, and finish cooling on wire rack.
If desired, spread a little melted butter on the tops and sprinkle a bit of cinnamon sugar on the tops.

They came out super moist, and not too sweet - definitely a good breakfast treat.

Carrot Cake Cookie Sandwiches

We have temporarily put aside the quest for the perfect cupcake to make these cookies. Here is a recipe for carrot cake cookie samiches with cream cheese filling, and since we both can't resist an opportunity to add food coloring to anything-and-everything, we appropriately tinted our filling a lovely carroty shade of orange. I searched for different recipes for carrot cake cookies and kinda combined them all into this one:

Carrot Cake Cookie Sandwiches
1 C packed brown sugar
2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
2 large eggs room temp
1.5 C all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/8 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp groung nutmeg
1 2/3 C rolled oats
1 1/2 C finely grated carrots
2/3 C raisins
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat to 350 (but not yet, since dough needs to chill for 30 minutes!)
Beat brown sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla, beat until well combined.
In a separate bowl, sift flour, baking powder & soda, the salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger together. Slowly add this to the wet mixture. Once it is combined, add the oats, carrots and raisins in alternately.
Chill 30 minutes in refrigerator. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Scoop out balls of dough about the size of a ping pong ball. We used a cookie scoop to make nice little bally shaped ones, since these cookies retain their shape after baking for the most part. Bake about 12 minutes, and then pull parchment paper off onto a wire rack to cool.




Cream Cheese Filling
4 oz cream cheese softened
1/2 stick butter softened
1/2 c confectioners sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
*Note, this does not make enough filling for the entire batch of cookies, since we wanted to have some without. If you want to use a good amount of filling in all of the cookie sandwiches, you should probably double all of these measurements.

Beat butter and cream cheese until smooth and creamy. Slowly add in the sugar, and once combined, add the vanilla (and then the food coloring if you are pigmentally inclined like we are).
When cookies are entirely cooled, pipe a good amount onto the flat side of a cookie, and top with the flat side of another cookie.



Keep refrigerated once frosting is put on. Even when served cold, right out of the frig, these cookies were received very very well, and were veryyyyy moist. Enjoy!