Larry’s thrilled with this week’s Baked Sunday Mornings: carrot cake is one of his favorite desserts ever. Carrots in cake? No thanks. And with walnuts and raisins? Ew. I think carrot cake’s only redeeming quality is the cream cheese frosting. In this case, cinnamon cream cheese frosting (genius).

The cake is fairly standard, with the exception of some vegetable oil and melted butter instead of the typical sticks of butter. There’s also a secret ingredient – toasted shredded coconut that’s mixed in with the batter. I kept that part a secret from Larry, who is no fan of shredded coconut.

I had mostly purple carrots on hand, and I kind of like the purple flecks dispersed throughout the cake. I grated half the carrots very finely on a microplane, then did the rest using the fine shredder disc on the food processor (much, much faster). I think next time I’ll just do them all in the food processor.

I like that this is a snack cake, rather than a layer cake. It’s humble and rustic, but pretty darn good (for carrot cake). The fact that raisins are absent from this recipe is a plus, as is the addition of cinnamon to the cream cheese. I’ll be making this one again.

For the recipe and to see how the other Baked Sunday Mornings bakers fared, head over to Baked Sunday Mornings.

• Classic Carrot Cake with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting (Baked Elements, p. 130)