Carrot Carrot Cake

I've actually made quite a few carrot cakes in my time, but here is a classic one. The carrot cake is just a plain one - no additions of walnuts, raisins, coconut, pineapple, or anything else. It is moist and tasty. The cream cheese icing is the best one I've made yet. And I opted for a classic, four layer, modestly decorated version.

Carrot Carrot Cake
2 cups packed grated carrot
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
2/3 cup oil
4 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
1 cup granulated (white) sugar 
3 cups all-purpose (plain) flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon(or your favorite spice, or omit)
1 batch best cream cheese frosting (see tomorrow's post)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two 8 or 9 inch round pans.
Mix together the carrot, applesauce, oil, vinegar, and vanilla. Stir in the sugar, then the remaining dry ingredients. Spread batter evenly in prepared pans.
Bake for 30-40 minutes until cake tests clean. Cool in pans ten minutes, then gently unmold onto a wire rack and cool completely.
Slice each cake in half horizontally. 

Place one layer down on a plate or cake board. Spread with an even layer of cream cheese frosting.*
Repeat layers until all are used. Then completely frost the top and sides of the cake.**
For the carrots and decorations, divide the remaining icing in three, keep one portion white, color one portion light green and the remaining portion light orange.

To decorate my carrot cake, I used an icing comb to create lines on the side of the cake.
I added a white shell border around the bottom using an open star tip.
I added alternating white rosettes around the top - big and small.
Then I piped carrots using a plain open round tip, and the greens using a leaf tip.
Just for a little more color and decoration I used a drop flower tip to pipe orange flowers on the side of the cake and a grass tip to add some green grass. 

* With a tall, heavy, rich cake like this I personally do not like to put a lot of icing in between layers. I think there is enough icing on the top and sides of the cake and with the decorations. Therefore I put enough frosting just to keep the layers together. However, some bakers recommend layers of 2:1 cake to filling or even 1:1 with lighter cakes.

**Depending on how good you are at frosting cakes you may need to do a layer of 'dirty icing' before frosting the final layer.