Lightened Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

This weekend is Easter weekend, and everyone is dying their eggs and stuffing them in corners around their yard. You know what this weekend also means? It means easter candy! I don't have candy that often, so every year around this time, I buy myself a large bag of Robin Eggs. You know, the best candy ever! Well, I have to trust my will power here and I feel like I have mastered the art of the Robin Egg Stashing. Ever summer you could open my freezer and probably find a half full bag of frozen little chocolate eggs. This way I can have my eggs all year round, and not feel guilty about having a few once in a while! Those Robin Eggs are definitely my guilty pleasure.

This week was also my week off before I started a new job, and I lined up a few recipes and craft projects to keep myself busy. A few weeks ago I was going through my cookbooks and I noticed that I had a lot of loose printed recipes in between pages and books. I have a recipe book that I can write in, but I had a lot of printed recipes and I wasn't going to sit and write them all out. So I remembered a post I had seen on Pinterest about making a recipe binder. I thought that was such a good idea! So I went to the store and bought a 1" ring binder, a large pack of protective paper sleeves, and some dividing tabs. Not very expensive at all. Then I went online and found a "recipe binder cover template" and I worked my amateur skills on paintbrush/photoshop and printed out a back, front, and side cover! 

It was very simple and quick, and it's pretty! :) I spent the most time trying to categorize all of the recipes, because I only had 8 tabs (should have bought more). After I made my tabs and had my recipes in their respective categories, I slid all of the pages into protective covers; even the tabs because in the covers the pages came out further than the tabs. So I just cut small slits for the tabs to poke out. The protective covers are great because you can take out the page you are using and you don't have to worry about getting any food on them! Now I have a great place to put the recipes I print out. No more searching for them between cookbook pages. :)

Now go and make a delicious light Carrot Cake with almost 1/2 the calories! Happy Easter everyone! 

Here are your ingredients for the cake. I didn't have any buttermilk, so I placed 1 tablespoon lemon juice in the bottom of my measuring cup and then filled it with milk until it reached 1 cup. I left it to sit for at least 5 minutes, and there you have it, Homemade Buttermilk! (You can also use white vinegar in place of the lemon juice.)

Here are the ingredients for your easy frosting!

The recipe originally said pecans, but I had walnuts in my cupboard so that is what I used. 

Moist and sweet! So delicious. You couldn't even tell this was a lighter version of the original. 

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

adapted from Cooking Light Magazine - April 2011 Issue


Ingredients:
Cake:
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
6 tablespoon butter, softened
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup low-fat buttermilk (To make your own mix 1 cup milk and 1 tablespoon lemon. Let sit for 5 min before using in recipe.)

Frosting:
8 oz non-fat cream cheese
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup powdered sugar

Direction:

1. Preheat oven to 350º.
2. To prepare cake, weigh or lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups, and level with a knife. Combine flour, 2 tablespoons baking powder, ground cinnamon, and 1/4 teaspoon salt in a medium bowl; stirring with a whisk. Add 2 cups grated carrot, tossing to combine. 
3. Place granulated sugar, brown sugar, and 6 tablespoons butter in a large bowl. Beat with a mixer at medium speed until combined. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in 1 teaspoon vanilla. Add flour mixture and buttermilk alternately to sugar mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Spread batter into 13x9in metal pan coated with cooking spray (if using glass pan, reduce heat by 25º). Bake at 350º for 28 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool cake completely on a wire rack. 
4. To prepare frosting, place cream cheese, vanilla, and powdered sugar in a bowl; stirring until combined with a whisk (do not over mix). Spread frosting evenly over cooled cake. Sprinkle evenly with nuts (walnuts, pecans, etc.).

Serves 20.

Nutrition: (per slice) Calories 162; Fat 3g; Carb 18g; Cholesterol 28mg; Protein 4g; Fiber 1g