I’ve been making Frittata for well over a decade by now and to this day find it to be one of my favorite foods to eat and even to make. I’ve made so many combinations of this dish but Frittata with Spinach, Zucchini, and Leeks Continue Reading
During the week things are busy in our house. Really, things are busy every day, but Monday – Friday seems to always bring a bit of extra crazy to our lives. When it comes to weeknight meals, I try to make them simple, limit the Continue Reading
My sweet tooth is a big one and my love for dessert is almost as big as my love for bacon, cocktails, and salads.
When it comes to dessert my primary skills fall into two categories: Cookies and Pies. At Christmas time I make endless amounts of cookies and ding-dong-ditch my family and friends as I drop trays of them on their front steps. For Thanksgiving, my brother-in-lawand I brainstorm for a good month about the types of pies we’ll serve to the family. We come up with a well-rounded list ranging from Pecan to Cherry, the classic Pumpkin, and everything else in between. I usually make at least six pies every Thanksgiving!
Why am I am telling you about cookies and pies when this article is called Easiest Carrot Cake?
My assumption – which maybe your’s, too – has always been that cake is difficult to make. All that flour, measuring, the ratios of baking soda to baking powder, etc. And don’t even get me started on the frosting! Do I need a piping bag? Do I need a special tool to spread it around? Oh jeez! For all of my years, I’ve assumed cakes are far beyond my skill set.
One weekend my Dad was coming to town to hang out with my son and me while Justin was on an international work trip. I love to cook for my Dad and wanted to make something really special for him. I asked him if he had a preference for dessert while he was here and we finally settled on Carrot Cake. I thought, “Really Dad, you want me to bake a cake?” But then I realized that if I was going to bake my first ever from scratch cake, he was the right audience. He’d eat it if it was horrible, but never tell me and if it was good, like really good he’d certainly tell me.
Well, he told me and you guys, it was GOOD. Easiest Carrot Cake was a hit, a sinch to make, and truly beautiful.
I’m not winning any cake-baking competitions anytime soon, but Easiest Carrot Cake – let me tell you – is truly a prize-winning sweetheart.
First things first, this cake batter needs room for mixing. The combination of the ingredients can be bulky and you need a bowl with a large circumference to mix and distribute all the ingredients evenly. So choose your largest mixing bowl.
Second, the most complex parts of Easiest Carrot Cake are shredding the carrots and chopping the pecans, which both have supermarket shortcuts if you’d prefer. You can buy pre-shredded carrots in the produce section and pre-chopped Pecans. See, Easiest Carrot Cake can get even easier!
Third, for the frosting, which contains both butter and cream cheese, it is truly best to use them at room temperature. Pull them out of the refrigerator from the start of the cake-making process and they’ll be good to go when you need them.
To make the cake, combine the eggs, sugar, oil, and vanilla in a large mixing bowl. You can do this vigorously with a whisk or use an electric hand or stand mixer. Once combined, add the flour,
baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg. Mix well to combine and incorporate. Finally, fold in the shredded carrots with a spatula or wooden spoon until they are evenly distributed.
The batter will be fairly loose and smell wonderfully fragrant from the cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg.
To ensure the fully baked cake will come out of the baking pan, it must be buttered and floured! Using one tablespoon of butter on the back of a paper towel or the wrapper from the stick of butter, grease all parts of the baking pan. Really spread it around! You do not need a thick coating, just enough to cover all sides. Once all sides of the 9 x 13 baking pan are greased, distribute one tablespoon of flour across the baking pan, shaking it around the entire pan until it’s fully coated. Similar to the step with the butter, the flour doesn’t need to be thick, just evenly distributed.
Now that your 9 x 13 baking pan is ready to go, pour in the carrot cake batter and put it into the oven at 375 degrees for 45 minutes.
Cream Cheese Icing is essential for Easiest Carrot Cake and you’ll see why after one bite! While the cake is baking, make the icing by combining the butter, cream cheese (this is my favorite lactose-free version), and vanilla in a medium-sized mixing bowl using a hand or stand mixer. Once combined, add the confectioner’s sugar ½ cup at a time until fully incorporated. Repeat this process until the entire four cups of confectioner’s sugar are combined. This takes about 5 minutes. Set the icing aside and allow it to sit at room temperature.
After the cake has been baked for 45 minutes, insert the tip of a knife into the center. If it comes out clean, the cake is fully baked and can be removed. If not, allow the cake to bake for another 5 minutes.
Once fully baked, allow the cake the cool for 5 – 10 minutes in the baking pan.
After 5 to 10 minutes, run a sharp knife around the edges of the cake to help it easily release. Place a parchment-lined cooling rack on top of the baking pan, parchment side down. Invert the baking pan on top of the cooling rack, give it a gentle shake and your cake will fall out! Let the cake cool completely, which takes 30 minutes to an hour.
Once completely cooled, frost the cake. I find the easiest way to do this is by dolloping large heaps of frosting across the entire cake, which helps ensure an even distribution of icing with very little effort. Spread the frosting using a rubber spatula, ensure it gets to all the edges, corners, nooks, and crannies.
Top with the chopped pecans and a sprinkle of cinnamon and you’re ready to enjoy!
Our ever wild, super sweet, and extremely silly little guy is a full two years old! This means I’ve been a Mom for two years. How’d that happen? Time goes fast and slows all at the same time! Of all the milestones I’ve experienced so Continue Reading
There is a lot of pressure, especially on moms, to plan the perfect birthday party for their kids. Planning a birthday party takes a lot of work and can add stress to something that should be fun and exciting. I’ve pulled together some ideas and Continue Reading
Okay, so you read the title and think I’m clueless when it comes to the enormous demands of child-rearing or perhaps think I’m just a lazy new dad trying to cop out of my responsibilities. Hold on, Karen. I’m not proposing you leave your kid alone and go off to play 18-holes, but I am suggesting that part of being a great dad is allowing your child to have self play time where he can have some independence and learn to negotiate blocks of time by himself in a safe, fun way.
As new dads, we are under constant pressure to ensure our kids are constantly busy and active. Whether it’s baby classes on massage or stimulation techniques or toddler Soccer leagues, our schedules can start to look like a game of Tetris as we rush from one activity to the next. The truth is kids, just like their parents, need active time, but they also need ‘time out’ for themselves. This is where self play comes into the picture!
So how do you teach your baby or toddler to be independent, self-sufficient, and enjoy self play? By allowing them a safe space and dedicated time to play alone with established self play activities.
Here are some tips that work for us to encourage self play. They may just work for you too.
“Alone-time” (self play) doesn’t mean letting your child’s inner diva run free unsupervised. Create a guided and safe environment for them to self play. Every morning when my son, Hudson, wakes up, we don’t rush to his room. Instead, we get to sleep in and allow him to decide when he needs us. We know he is safe in his crib, and we have a video monitor with extensive sound settings, and we’ll be instantly alerted if he needs us.
Hudson typically spends this time talking with his ‘friends’, his stuffed bear (aka Teddy), and his stuffed dog (aka Woof Woof). It’s a ‘win’-win,’ giving us folks some time to get ready for the day and be present when Hudson does call out for us to come to get him for his morning repeat of “Go Dog Go.”
Self play and healthy “me-time” don’t just happen on their own. Dropping your kid in the playpen without any warning and walking off to grab a drink will not go down well with your little one. Creating more opportunities for “alone-time” (self play) will allow your child to warm up to the idea.
We started early on with Hudson. Every time he has a tantrum (which with toddlers usually starts as a whine and quickly evolves into a full-blown meltdown in about 20 seconds), we quickly pick him up, or if he is too worked up, we sit next to him and sing him a song. The monotone tune calms him down and triggers him to relax. We then are able to re-direct him to a new activity that he can do on his own (self-play) without intervention from us allowing him to feel independent and relaxed.
We feel this process teaches him about his emotions and offers him ways to not only deal with them in heightened states but also what can do afterward (self play activities) that are still relaxing but engaging for him to have his alone time.
Many first-time dads may feel the urge to protect their children, and leaving them alone in the morning or at night may play on your guilt. Reframe self play as a fun time for your child and allow them to model you enjoying your own me-time. Find out more about how I schedule me-time here.
Self play is more about allowing your child to explore their interests. Show them some ideas like constructing a giant tower out of lego or hosting a teddy bear picnic and then walk off while they try it out themselves. Hudson loves art, so we equip him with some washable markers and paints (always check the label) and some paper and he is good to go for a while.
Encouraging your child to enjoy their own company with self play activities is good for your little one and good for dad (and mom). So throw the guilt in the trash and enjoy watching your kid hang out on his own a bit. It won’t make you a bad dad; it’ll make you a great one.
Do you find the only burpees you are doing these days are baby burping? Are those trusted barbell curls being replaced with bicep flexes, carrying the car seat to and from the car? Well, I have a quick sure-proof workout – the Dad Workout – Continue Reading
Here are my top 3 Daily Dad Routine tips to keep sane and become a better dad. I became a Dad and went straight into survival mode. Last summer, it got to a point where I felt totally lost. I was doing my best to Continue Reading
Now before you throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater, hear me out. I know they say coffee is a first-time dad’s best friend. It’s hallmarked as the cure to every new dad’s survival problem. Sleep deprivation?… coffee, the baby is teething?… coffee, Baby Shark on repeat? …coffee? But what if that cup (you are probably chugging back right now) is keeping you awake long after your little one has dozed off?
The problem with coffee, as a crutch for sleep deprivation, is it actually makes you more tired. I know none of us would like to admit this. It’s a tempting fix when you feel like you are running on empty, the baby is screaming his lungs off and your wife looks like she just stepped off the set of Dawn of the Dead. But there is a better fix than coffee.
I used to drink coffee and sugar as a crutch to ride the midday crash but the instant energy high it created would evaporate just as quickly. When I became a new dad, I needed something else to help me with the constant brain fog.
The days were all blurring into one, with no off button between work mode and home mode. So after just becoming a father for the first time, we endured the marathon evening of cluster feeding when Hudson was about 2.5 weeks old and I learned pretty quickly that caffeine was not the answer. I also learned that “sleeping like a baby” is the worst form of false advertising ever created (and I should know, I’m in marketing), but that’s a story for another day.
After 18 long months of wondering blindly through the long nights and demands of a new baby, I figured out the top 3 reasons to ditch the coffee and try something else instead. Here are my tried and tested top 3 ways to beat sleep deprivation.
Drinking coffee just as you wake up actually has a limited effect on your cortisol levels. Your body already produces cortisol in the morning, which naturally wakes you up, rendering that morning cup of coffee pretty much useless. So instead when I wake up, I make my super greens smoothie and I follow that up with a pre-workout drink. This gives me an energy boost and improves my focus throughout the morning, rather than the spike in energy I was getting from coffee.
Instead of reaching for yet another dose of caffeine to keep you going from work to home mode, I have found an all-natural way to re-energize yourself. And it’s so simple. A cold shower. Okay, I get it. I was skeptical too at the beginning but trust me it works. Wim Hoff has made cold therapy famous, but if the thought of ice blocks in a tub is not your cup of (caffeine-free) tea, a cold shower should do the trick.
Replacing your mid-morning coffee with a round of exercise has proven to provide a mental boost similar to (if not better than) caffeine. I like to head out for my 45 min walk around the neighborhood where I listen to The Mindset Mentor. My daily walk is part of my daily routine and is as much about physical exercise as it is a mental reprieve. Whether it is cold, raining, snowing, or 110 degrees, I’m committed to this daily ritual.
To sum it up, Super Greens are your new best friend and the dude you want to hang out with. You’re a dad now.
Here in Georgia, we’re gliding into Spring – the sunny afternoons call you to the outdoors, berries and fruit are in abundance at the supermarkets with a whole new level of vibrancy, and bits of green are showing up on the trees along with the Continue Reading
