Blue Dahlia Bakery Carrot Cake

Ingredients
 2 cups all-purpose flour
 2 cups sugar Whisk together in large bowl
 2 teaspoons baking soda
 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
 1 teaspoon salt

 4 eggs
 1 ¼ cups vegetable oil
 1/2 cup apple sauce (I actually get the 6 pack of little individual apple
sauces and use one per batch of carrot cake, I think it is about ½ cup,
maybe 1/3 cup)
 3 cups grated carrots (food processor or you will go insane)
 1 1/2 cups chopped pecans or walnuts, optional

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray 2 (9-inch) round pans with baking
spray (I use Baker’s Joy in the blue and white can from the baking aisle).
You could also grease with shortening and then flour the tin if you don’t
have the spray.

In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt and
whisk it around to mix it up together. Add eggs, vegetable oil, and apple
sauce. Using a hand mixer, blend until combined (don’t overbeat). Now fold
in the carrots and pecans/walnuts with a spatula. Again, careful not to over
mix, that would create an undesirable texture.

Pour into pans. Bake for approximately 30-40 minutes (in this oven, my
cakes take about 30 minutes, and cupcakes take about 20-25 min, just
keep checking them with toothpicks.) Remove from oven and cool for 5
minutes on wire rack. Remove from pans, place on wire rack and allow to
cool completely before frosting.
Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe (this is the recipe I use with the
pumpkin bread, omit cinnamon if using for carrot cake as the carrot cake already has a lot of
cinnamon but you can use the cinnamon recipe if you like)

8 oz cream cheese, room temperature

1/4 C (half stick) butter, room temperature
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon (add more to taste) omit for carrot cake frosting ;)
2-4 C powdered sugar (add more or less to make it a stiffness that you like… I usually end up
using 1 box of powdered sugar which is 1 pound, also equal to 4 cups)

Mix cream cheese and butter well.

Add vanilla and mix.
Add powdered sugar & mix.

Tip: You can add coconut to the frosting if you like it, we love coconut, so we add it to ours
usually. Toasted coconut is even better ;)