Carrot Cake

I made a carrot cake recipe for my DIL birthday cake from Cake By Courtney.  I've made a few of her cakes and her recipes are spot on -- but time consuming.

I planned to make a carrot cake from a vintage recipe I've used over the years, but I had the idea to make the frosting from Cake By Courtney -- I think that's her super power.  After looking over the recipe, I decided to make the cake too.

One problem.  I don't have three 8 inch cake pans (I have 9 inch).  I run into this problem every time I use her recipes so I FINALLY ordered the 8 inch while the cakes were baking.  It's not a big issue, but the cake looks better with 3 layers..  I baked two 9 inch and a few cupcakes.  Next time.

I left the sides bare to make the cake seem less squatty.  I used GF flour and the cupcakes were delicious.  The cream cheese butter cream is incredible though and I don't usual like icing.  Biggest difference in the cake recipes were no nuts in this one and different sugars.  Next time I might add the nuts.  NO RAISINS in either though and I like that.

She includes weight measurements so I used the scale -- lordy is that so much easier when you need 6 cups of something.

Here she is in her glory.  "Rustic" and yummy.

Picnic is all set.  Easy-ish taking help from the sub platter.  Two homemade dips (German beer spread and lemon-garlic hummus), candied bacon, sammies, chips, grapes, cucumbers and pretzels for dipping and CAKE.  Of course, wine tasting and such.  

Weather is set to be perfect.  That means CROWDS so we need to get there early to get a big table.  We packed a table and chairs just in case. 

Fingers crossed it all works smoothly.  Happy Saturday.  Later gators.