Meatless Monday: Carrot Cake

I'd been wanting to make a carrot cake for long while, but I'd kept putting it off because there are just the two of us at home and consuming a whole cake by ourselves is just a recipe for health and fitness disaster. Luckily, we had Matt's dad visiting this past week, leading up to Valentine's Day, so I used the excuse of the 'holiday' and our guest to make the cake. (Matt's dad has a major sweet tooth, so I figured I could count on him to put a sizable dent in any dessert I might make.)

I'd seen a couple of recipes that looked good but required more than one round pan and slicing the cake with a large pastry knife into multiple layers. Um, a little more complicated than I wanted to get to satisfy my - I mean, Matt's dad's - sweet tooth this time. Maybe next time. The recipe I chose could be made in a 9 x 13-inch baking pan. Easy.

Carrot Cake
Recipe

Matt and I both commented that the frosting seemed a bit more than was necessary . . . . Then again, neither of us exactly left any extra frosting on our plates after having a slice, . . . so you be the judge when you're frosting your own.

In addition to frosting, I toyed with the idea of garnishing the cake with thinly sliced pieces of heart-shaped carrot but ditched that notion after deciding that it sounded like even more work than slicing round pieces of cake into multiple layers. Grating a little bit of carrot on top as the recipe suggests turned out to be a pretty enough touch.

This recipe may be high in calories, but it also has many good-for-you ingredients - carrot, pineapple, coconut, Neufchâtel instead of cream cheese. If you're going to be bad and have dessert, this certainly isn't the worst you could do. And, remember, the beta-carotene in carrots is great for your eyesight . . .









. . . eyesight you'll be grateful for unless, of course, you find this is what you're looking at:













The sight of a nice piece of carrot cake may entice your sweet tooth, but there's just nothing like the vision of Carrot Top pubes to positively kill your appetite.

Got any favorite vegetarian or vegan recipes?? Please share!

Other Meatless Monday posts