Carrot Cake Expert

The Marshmallow is addicted to the carrot cake at, of all places, Chuck-a-Rama. And before you ask...yes, it's our favorite restaurant (for the family) for a variety of reasons and anyone with children will understand why. We all eat for less than $30, anything we want in any quantity. The kids can eat noodles, fries, baby corn, hard boiled eggs, and pieces of ham and mom and dad can have grown up food or at least comfort food. And it's remarkably good for a buffet.  So we go there frequently.

I've decided to become a carrot cake expert and surely I can do better than Chuck-a-Rama, right?  Surely.  So I started tonight.

My sister gave me a cookbook for Christmas...


So far I haven't used it but I found their carrot cake recipe and decided it was a good place to start.  It calls for butter flavored crisco! Who uses that?  I guess I do...but the dough was very smooth and fluffy. Sort of like zucchini bread. In fact it tasted like zucchini bread. Is this all there is to it? I have a great zucchini bread recipe. Do I just cover it with cream cheese frosting?  Hmmm, put this away in my file cabinet in my head (wait, I might never find it again...).

I just took the cake out of the oven and lo...the middle fell a tiny bit. 's Ok.  I'm sure it'll taste the same but who wants a cake to fall?  Now I just have to wait for it to cool and then put on the frosting.  I'll report on the results - how will The Marshmallow grade my cake against Chuck-a-Rama?  I'll probably want to try other recipes. If anyone out there has a good one, shoot it my way!  Maybe I can get Chuck-a-Rama's recipe.