Carrot cake

What a great weekend it's been! This was the first Saturday in a long time that I haven't had to work and didn't have something else to do. This was the kind of day I wish there were more of; a day filled with fun and adventure and relaxation and love! This day we attended a sealing at a beautiful temple (have you ever noticed the awesome bluish pinkish strips of light along the sides of the Mount Timpanogos temple? P.S. Congrats to Ayumi and Tyler!), had some fun at the Sportsman's Expo (neither Mike nor I would consider ourselves even close to sportsmen), tried out a new recipe, house warmed with some awesome people, and won like three of the four games we played! The balance of my post this time will focus on two of the above Saturday activity items.

I will first talk about an awesome recipe I found for carrot cake. I seriously think this stuff is heavenly. I don't know what it is, because the recipe was pretty basic, but there musta been some magic or something because it was awesome. I decided to make little baby cupcakes to take to the aforementioned house warming party and had some fun doing every aspect. Mike helped in a huge way by grating the carrots, which, as you know if you've made carrot cake, is not an easy task. Thanks, sweetie! It's also not easy to get the batter into the little tiny cupcake cups without making a huge mess. This is where it got really fun! We scooped the batter into a ziplock bag, cut the corner off, and carefully dropped enough into each cup. Our really full, really orangey- browny- lumpy bag of batter looked moderately unappetizing to say the least!

Well, in the end we made superb little morsels which were enjoyed by many! Oh yeah, that's another thing- this recipe made a ton of little bite- sized cupcakes and even a mini cake for Natalie's birthday. All I can say is DELISH!

Here's the recipe:

Carrot Cake

• 2 c.flour
• 2 tsp.baking powder
• 1 1/2 tsp.cinnamon
• 2 tsp.salt
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 1 c. oil
• 2 c. brown sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 c. chopped walnuts (I didn't use any nuts)
  
• 3 c.grated carrots

Directions :

Mix dry ingredients; add oil and blend. Add eggs one at a time and beat after each addition. Add carrots and nuts and blend well. Put batter into a greased and floured 13x9 rectangle cake pan (or 2 9" round pans) for 45 minutes at 350 degrees. Cool and frost with cream cheese frosting.

Frosting:

1 8oz. pkg. cream cheese

1/2 c. margarine

1 lb.box of powdered sugar

2 tsp. vanilla

Mix together untill smooth and spread on cooled cake.I usually sprinkle with extra chopped walnuts for garnish.

Next item of business- just gonna toot my horn for a minute; well, sorta. I totally kicked butt on Apples to Apples at the party last night. Okay what I really want to say is that I am a really horrible loser. I HATE to lose. I didn't really think that I was that much of a sore loser until I started thinking about winning last night. Always when I play games the haunting title of a sore loser is lingering, but I just kind of poo poo it away and think to myself, "nah, I'm just competitive." Well, last night I was thinking about how I wasn't going to be a sore loser, that I just would keep myself from caring about the game. That, in itself, is hard to do for one with my condition. I guess sometime throughout the night and the few games we played before Apples to Apples I forgot about my personal goal and totally went for the win. I was successful, but for what really? It really bothers me about myself that I am such a poor loser. Note to self: work on losing and being okay with it. That's all.