I have never been a huge fan of carrot cake. In fact, I am solidly against any baked good that contains fruit, vegetables, or nuts. White cake with white buttercream frosting for this girl. Chris, on the other hand, has a major weakness for carrot cake. Especially the kind with cream cheese frosting.

Fortunately, our cake preferences don’t matter very often. You see, I have zero willpower when it comes to baked goods, so I make every effort not to ever keep them in our house. Chris seems to be mostly ok with this, his willpower is better than mine, but it doesn’t matter because he wouldn’t have a chance to eat the cake anyway.

Chris likes to joke with people that he never gets to eat ice cream because I don’t like to have it in the house and when he does buy it, I eat it all before he gets to have any. Same goes for cake, cookies, or anything else sweet.His obeservation is completely accurate. I have a history of housing half gallon containers of ice cream in one night. Sad but true.

Needless to say, Chris did a double take last weekend when I suggested that we bake a cake. Knowing my disdain for mixing veggies and baked goods, he was probably extra surprised when I suggested a carrot cake. I began gathering his cake requirements, which, much to my chagrin, included fruit, vegetables, and nuts, and set out to find a recipe.

I’m still not sure how he decided on carrots, mango, dried cranberries, and pecans to be included in this cake, because there does not seem to be a single reputable carrot cake recipe on all of the internet that includes all of these ingredients. I almost backed down from his challenge, instead going for a more simple recipe, but, finally, I decided to go for it.

I started with Bridget’s recipe because I trust her above all others for any kind of baked goods and made modifications from there. In the end, my finished product is probably nothing like hers was, but that’s ok. It was a phenomenal carrot cake, in spite of the fruits, veggies, and nuts, and it definitely won Chris’ approval!

For the record, this cake lasted more than one night; we did not finish it until the third night and no, we did not share any.

Adapted from The Way the Cookie Crumbles.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups brown sugar
• 1 cup oil (I used vegetable oil)
• 4 eggs
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 3 cups grated carrot
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries
• 1/4 cup finely chopped dried mango
• Recommended frosting: Cream Cheese Frosting

Directions:

• Pre-heat oven to 325 degrees.
• Grease and flour two 9″ round cake pans.
• In a bowl, whisk together flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
• In a separate bowl, combine the carrots, dried cranberries, pecans, and mango.
• Beat together the oil and brown sugar in bowl of a mixer. Slowly add in the eggs, one by one.
• After beating in the eggs, slowly add the flour mixture to the mixer bowl, mixing only until the flour has fully combined.
• By hand, fold in the carrot mixture, then divide evenly between the prepared cake pans.
• Bake for 40-50 minutes or until it passes the toothpick test.
• When the cake is removed from the oven, allow to cool for five minutes before removing the cakes from the pans and transferring to a wire cooling rack.

I first saw a recipe for Cookie Dough Hummus on Branny’s blog last fall while I was in India with my under equipped kitchen and I was so intrigued by it that, months later, I still remembered that I wanted to try it, but, instead of serving it as a dip, I wanted to try it in my favorite cookie dough form: frozen, raw, and as a mix-in for other foods.

I’m sure that a lot of people would be sketched out by the idea of chickpeas in “cookie dough”, but, like with her Black Bean and Avocado Brownie recipe, I was completely onboard with again substituting beans (in this case legumes) for flour and giving it a go. In an uninformed taste test, Chris admitted that these dough bites did quite closely resemble peanut butter cookie dough. I must add the disclaimer that he knew there was a catch just because of the fact that he came home to a freezer full of cookie dough. He knows me too well to be fooled into thinking that I would actually do anything that awesome.

Adapted from/inspired by The Wannabe Chef via Branny Boils Over.

Per recipe:
Calories ~ 1287, Fat ~ 38.5 g, Carbohydrates ~ 208.5 g, Protein ~ 40.1 g

Per 1/12 recipe:
Calories ~ 107, Fat ~ 3.2 g, Carbohydrates ~ 17.4 g, Protein ~ 3.3 g