Halloween Carrot Spice Cake With Caramel Filling and Buttercream Top

Cute, eh?
I for one, welcome our new evil overlord...
If you have extra buttercream, roll it into balls, chill and then dip in melted chocolate. They set pretty well and look adorable.


This layer cake has everything in it-pineapple, carrots, coconut, raisins...the only thing it lacks is nuts. It is moist, dense, gooey and so filled with sweetness it makes your teeth hurt just reading the ingredients. Probably not a good cake for diabetics. I used a fresh pineapple that I crushed, but tinned would work fine (probably easier to drain-mine gave off quite a bit of juice) and you could exchange any dried fruit (currants, sultanas) or even walnuts for the raisins. For this particular recipe, I think Parchment lining the bottom of the pans would have been nice, but I greased and floured them. I did have a bit of cake stick to the bottom, but as you are frosting and covering the cake so heavily, it hardly mattered in the end. You can also bake this as a sheet cake in a 9x13 pan and just leave it in to frost.

We had fun decorating it with the mouldable buttercream from yesterday's post. It took tinting well, and rolled out perfectly.

You Will Need:

For the cake:

3 large eggs
2 cups AP flour
1 1/4 cups vegetable oil
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
Pinch dried ginger
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup shredded carrots
1 cup shredded coconut
1 cup crushed and drained pineapple
1 cup raisins

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour 2 9 inch pans (or use parchment on the bottom and then grease again). Set aside.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs. Add the sugar, flour, oil, baking soda, spices and vanilla. Mix well until combined. Stir in the carrots, pineapple, coconut and raisins by hand. Mix well. Pour into pans and bake until they test done (Mine took 50 minutes). Let cool in pans twenty minutes on rack. Then, unmould. It is not a catastrophe if the cakes stick a bit-just loosen it with a spatula and plop it back onto the cake. You'll fix it with frosting later.

For the filling/frosting:

In a small pan, melt 1/2 cup unsalted butter. Add 1 cup brown sugar and stir over low heat two minutes. Add 1/4 cup whole milk and whisk until it comes to a boil. Remove from heat and cool completely. Then, beat in 1-2 cups of confectioner's sugar until you have a spreadable frosting. Use the frosting to fill and frost sides of cake. Top with rolled buttercream.