birthday cake for dad

My dad loves carrot cake. I've been making him carrot cake for his birthday since I was a teenager. I don't enjoy shredding the carrots, but the end product is well worth it. I've tried using pre-shredded carrots before but they're too big / thick and they kind of all sink to the bottom while the cake cooks, making for an odd texture. So, I suck it up and shred by hand. ;)

I've been using the same recipe for this cake for ages as well, all though I do add a lot more spices (ginger, cloves, nutmeg) than the recipe calls for (just cinnamon). It's from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook my dad got me when I was probably about 14. The recipe calls for a LOT of oil (2 cups) and I've never deviated from that until this year. This year I decided to try subbing yogurt for half the oil. I used full-fat yogurt, but even so, it has half the fat of the oil, if that. It worked like a charm. The cake came out wonderfully moist and tender.

The cream cheese frosting is just butter, cream cheese, vanilla and powdered sugar. I saved out a little to color for decorating. My frosting-carrots look more like chili peppers, I know. I had a lot more colored frosting left over than I intended, so I kind of just kept scrawling things until I'd used most of it up.