My Favorite Carrot Cake Recipe

When it comes to carrot cakes, the more add-ins, the better. This means crushed pineapple, coconut, raisins AND walnuts.  This year, I made mini carrot cakes for my sister’s birthday, which was the day after Valentine’s.  A group of us went out to dinner and I gave these mini cakes as "favors”.  I lined tiny cake boxes with kraft parchment paper, attached handmade "LOVE" tags using this bundle from The Stamp Market and tied up the boxes with cute colorful baker's twine from Stampin' Up.  This recipe calls for a 13x9 inch pan but it can easily be adapted to other cake pan sizes.  I used 3” cake pans which yielded 4 cakes.

Cake:

2 c all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

3 large eggs

3/4 c buttermilk

3/4 c vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

1-1/4 c plus 2 tbsp sugar

2 c peeled and grated carrots (about 2 to 3 large carrots)

1-1/2 c sweetened flaked coconut

1 (8 oz) can crushed pineapple (do not drain)

1 c chopped walnuts

1 c raisins

Cream Cheese Frosting:
12 oz cream cheese, softened

1/2 c unsalted butter, softened
1-1/2 tsp vanilla extract
4 c powdered sugar

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350°F.  Spray 13x9-inch pan with non-stick cooking spray.  Set aside. 
2. For cake, whisk together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt in a medium bowl.  Set aside.
3. Place eggs, buttermilk, vegetable oil, vanilla extract, and sugar in a large bowl and mix until smooth.  Slowly add in dry ingredients and mix until just combined.  Gently fold in carrots, coconut, pineapple, pecans and raisins.    Pour batter evenly into prepared pan and bake 35 to 40 minutes or until cake springs back when pressed.
4. While the cake cools, for frosting, add cream cheese and butter in large bowl and beat until fluffy.  Add vanilla extract and mix until combined.  Slowly add powdered sugar and mix until smooth.  
5. Once the cake is cooled, evenly spread frosting over cake.  

Unconventional Chinese New Year Red Envelopes

A few weeks ago, I made these unconventional Chinese New Year red envelopes for my niece and nephews.  Since it's the Year of the Dog and Mama Elephant had just released their Favor Accessory - Dog die cut, I decided to forego passing out traditional red and gold envelopes and made my own.  In case you're interested, the die can be purchased here.  You can create various "breeds" of dogs depending on your creativity.  The envelopes were a hit!

My Favorite Banana Bread Recipe

I know it's been 8 years since my last post - where has the time gone?  I've been active on Social Media via my Instagram account @foodstraveller but after revisiting my blog a while ago, I realized I wanted to go back to blogging and share my travel, crafting and cooking pictures in more detail.  Blogging would allow this so here's my attempt at blogging 2.0.

Many, many years ago, when I was a young woman, I worked at Nordstrom selling men's shoes.  There were many great memories of that time in my life.  I took away many life lessons such as the "customer is always right".  I also took away the best banana bread recipe I've ever come across in my lifetime.  The recipe came out of an Employee Cookbook that was sold at the store.  Nowadays, Nordstom has published official fancy hard covered cookbooks, but back in the day, the cookbook I bought was a very "homemade" version with a spiral bound spine and a paper cover.  Here's the banana bread recipe from the cookbook with one edit by me.  I added some sour cream to the recipe.  This bread is amazingly moist.  You'll be thanking me like everyone who has ever had a slice of this bread.  It's heaven.  Enjoy!

Banana Bread

½ tsp salt

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

½ cup butter

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

¼ cup sour cream

3 or 4 ripe bananas (mashed)

1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. 

In a bowl, sift together flour, baking soda and salt.  Set aside.  Cream butter and sugar with a mixer.  Add eggs, sour cream, bananas and vanilla.  Then add flour; do not overmix.  Pour into greased loaf pan.  Bake for 1 hour or until toothpick comes out clean.