Carrot Cake

I am part of a group of friends that meet at each others' homes every Monday night. We typically have some kind of baked good and ice cream for refreshment. One of the kitchen-challenged yet creative fellows brings frozen treats from Braums Ice Cream and Dairy store when it's his turn. When these interesting characters admitted me to their fold, I promised them that when they came to my house I would make Carrot Cake.  I make a really good carrot cake, as anyone who's ever had it will heartily affirm. This is not a quick task for me. I love that we get together on Monday, because I can make the carrot cake on Sunday afternoon. The last time everyone came to my house, it was because one of the other guys had an emergency at his house and, asked to trade Mondays with me. I said, sure, but I wouldn't have time to make a carrot cake. I was in a bit of a time crunch myself that week and had to send my son into town to grab some store-bought baked goods for everyone. A couple of the guys gave me some good-natured ribbing about almost not coming when they heard there would be no carrot cake that time.

So it was my turn to have everyone over this week. I had plenty of notice, and set Sunday afternoon aside to make the Carrot Cake. Made sure I had organic carrots, grated them by hand. I have a food processor, and it's really fast to run them through there, and I would certainly do that if I were grating more than just the two cups for one cake, because then there's all the food processor parts to wash up and put away. Perhaps the labor evens itself out, what you exert grating carrots and rinsing the grater or mandolin versus getting the food processor out, putting it together, dropping the carrots in and grating them, zip zip, dis-assembling the food processor, washing all the parts, and putting it away. It might be fun, some time, to do a side-by-side comparison with a stopwatch and see how long each process takes to get two cups of grated carrots, start to finish, but for now the first option seems simpler for my small scale production run.

While the layers were baking, I got the brilliant idea to message some of my Cooperstown friends that I  know love carrot cake in general, and mine in particular, and tease them a little bit. I messaged them on facebook to say that we'd be having carrot cake at my house the next evening. In the time frame given, they could drive straight through, or catch a plane. As a plan B, I offered that the next time I visit Cooperstown, I would prevail upon my daughter to let me use her kitchen to make a carrot cake to share with them. We all had a lot of fun talking about the idea, and now everyone involved is looking forward to it.

Four of my friends rode out here together and arrived first. Joan already knew I had made carrot cake because we'd talked about it earlier, but the fellas were happy to hear about it. Then the next two guys arrived together, and when I told the story about teasing my Cooperstown friends with "you have 24 yours to get here," I saw those two high-fiving each other like a couple of little boys grown tall. 

Then they shared that on the way out here, one of them said to the other, "Do you think she's going to have that carrot cake this time?"

"Ooh, I don't know."

"Well, I think if she doesn't, we should charge her mileage for the trip to her house!"

I'm glad they didn't have to do that.

Everybody had as much as they wanted, and there was still about a third of the cake left, so it looks like my son might get a piece after all!