Procrastination? No thanks, I'm not feeling up to it.

The last time I updated, it was the end of March. So much has happened since then...I've been promoted to Assistant Manager of Payless, Melissa got a new job in Orlando and moved down there, and I got a kitty. Her name is Maggie and she's adorable. I'm incredibly happy with everything going on in my life right now.

Today has been the laziest day imaginable. I'm supposed to be studying for my Social Psych final tomorrow. But what did I do instead? Made a carrot cake. From scratch. I'll be honest, I just ate a piece, and I'm pretty impressed with my cooking skills. Haha...I had to play around with the recipe because I didn't have everything it called for. I got the recipe from AllRecipes.com, which was my first time on that site and I liked it. It lets you adjust the recipe to how big of a dish you want to make.

INGREDIENTS
4 eggs
1 1/4 cups vegetable oil
2 cups white sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3 cups grated carrots
1 cup chopped pecans

1/2 cup butter, softened
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
4 cups confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chopped pecans

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9x13 inch pan.
In a large bowl, beat together eggs, oil, white sugar and 2 teaspoons vanilla. Mix in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Stir in carrots. Fold in pecans. Pour into prepared pan.
Bake in the preheated oven for 40 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely.
To Make Frosting: In a medium bowl, combine butter, cream cheese, confectioners' sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Beat until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Stir in chopped pecans. Frost the cooled cake.

I didn't have vanilla extract, so I used a little honey to give it some flavor. And all I had was self-rising flour, so I omitted the baking powder and only added a little salt. I also didn't have to ingredients to actually MAKE the frosting, so I cheated a little on that part. I got lucky though, and happened to have a container of store-bought cream cheese icing, which worked fine.

I've never made a carrot cake before, but let me tell you...that is one big job right there. I grated an entire bag of carrots and thought that my hand was going to fall off. Anyways, it turned out perfectly. I really wanted to take a picture, and I'd love to post pictures of Maggie, but I left my camera in Apopka last weekend. So no pictures :-[

Well, three finals this week and then I'm done with spring term. Thank God. I think I'm going to go have another piece of cake and hit the books now....