Pineapple Carrot Cake with Light Cream Cheese Frosting #cakefriday week42/2012

Happy Birthday to our “American Dad” Charlie! My sister Andrea and I baked this cake for his birthday this week. It was so much fun but definitly too hot for baking! We had 100°F in California today. We frosted this cake in no time before it was melting off again.

Usually, the family recipe calls for a buttermilk glaze that is to pour over the cake right after baking to keep it very moist. But I decided to skip that part because the cake was incredibly moist and secondly it will save us some sugar and calories. Also there is less sugar and fat in this recipe as in the original version and we didn’t sacrifice flavor.

For two 9 inch cake pans you’ll need

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
3/4 cup veggie oil
3/4 cup buttermilk or milk
1 cup sugar
2 sachets of sweetener
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 can (8 oz.) crushed pineapple, drained
2 cups grated carrots
3,5 oz. shredded coconut
1 cup coarsly chopped walnuts

candied pineapple for decoration
chopped walnuts for decoration

for the frosting

1/4 lb butter, room temp
8 oz cream cheese (low fat), room temp
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 sachets of sweetener
1 tablespoon orange juice
1 teaspoon orange peal

Preheat oven to 350°C. Grease your cake pans.
Put flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt in a mixing bowl; set aside.
in an extra mixing bowl beat eggs, add oil, buttermilk/milk, vanilla and sugar/sweetener and mix well. Add to flour mixture and stir well. Then add carrots, nuts, pineapples and coconut. Stir well again.
Pour the dough into your greased pans and bake for about 55 min.
Let it cool for 10 minutes then take the cake out of its pan and let cool completely.

For the frosting mix all ingredients together and frost and decorate your cake to your liking.

We had this yummy cake for dessert with a muscat dessert wine from California. Just a great fit. Plus enjoying it outside on the deck made it taste even better.