A very moist carrot cake with cream cheese icing; the best I have ever eaten! The original recipe came from a friend of mine, but of course it has been severely tweaked. He put raisins in his. Ugh. You can also use all granulated sugar or all brown sugar in this recipe. If you like coconut, you can double to a full cup. If you don’t like coconut, leave it out!

Ingredients:

3 beaten eggs
¾ cup vegetable oil
¾ cup buttermilk
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup granulated white sugar
2 tsp vanilla

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp baking soda

1 can (8 ounces) crushed pineapple, undrained–I put it through the food processor again to avoid any large chucks as I have found the crushed isn’t always as crushed as I would like.

2 cups grated or shredded carrots
1 1/4 cup chopped pecans
½ cup flaked coconut (optional)

Combine eggs, oil, buttermilk sugar and vanilla and mix well. Then stir in all the dry ingredients and mix. Stir in pineapple, carrots, nuts and coconut.

Pour into sprayed (no-stick spray) 9×13 oblong pan. Bake at 350 for 40 to 50 minutes. Do not over bake. Frost when completely cooked and refrigerate.

Cream Cheese Icing

I recommend that you cut this recipe in half, but I do that with a lot of frosting recipes. I have no idea where people use the icing from the full recipe because it makes so much!

½ cup butter or margarine softened
8 ounce package softened cream cheese
1 tsp vanilla

16 to 20 ounces of powdered sugar

Combine all ingredients, using about 16 ounces of sugar to start. Beat until creamy. Add more sugar to get the desired consistency. Spread on completely cooled cake.