Martha Monday--Carrot cake

I tackled Martha's carrot cake for Easter.  And in true TMI fashion, things went awry while I was trying to emulate Martha. 

This is Martha's finished cake:

You can't see it from the picture, and I didn't know it until I was pulling out ingredients and mixing bowls late one night to bake it, that it is a THREE layer cake.  As in, you either need to own THREE 9" round cake pans, or you need to spend hours baking the cake layer by layer.   

As you can see, I only have TWO 9" round cake pans at my disposal.  And since I have ZERO spare time, I decided to make my version of Martha's cake with only two layers. 

One day I will get this Martha thing right, I swear.

Of course, with only two cake pans, I had to decrease the recipe by 1/3.  Which I thought would be easy since it called for three sticks of butter and three eggs, but got a little more complicated when it came to the shredded carrots.  What is 2/3 of 2 3/4 cups of carrots?  The TMI answer is "almost 2 cups." 

Hey, that's how we roll around here, okay?

The batter was very thick, and by the time I was putting it in the pan, I had developed some very serious doubts about the success of this cake experiment:  what if it's too dense?  What if everyone hates it?  What if I'm forced to eat this disaster all by myself? 

These doubts remained after the cake was baked, as it looked dense and tough in the pan.

However, it turned out in the end...

The cake was acceptably moist and quite delicious.  The cake was a hit. 

If I tackle this cake again, I'll be sure to take the time to make that third layer, or at least invest in a third 9" round cake pan by then.  Of course, now that I know how good it is, I might end up eating it all by myself anyways.  Give this carrot cake a try!