Carrot Cake with Fluffy Vanilla Bean Frosting

When it comes to cake, I typically gravitate towards chocolate, however I was recently requested to bake a carrot cake and I quickly realized after my first bite that my cake palette is much wider than I had thought.  Growing up, I was never really fond of carrot cake - I did not like the large bits of nuts or the dried fruit that often appeared inside of each layer and I definitely did not like cream cheese frosting.  I wanted to find a recipe that would appeal to all, so I settled on this recipe for Carrot Cake and frosted it with light and fluffy Seven Minute Frosting with vanilla bean seeds and let me tell you, it was beyond delicious. This cake was incredibly moist and had a great nutty flavor thanks to the pecans that were finely ground inside.  

A Few Things: I scooped up a few bunches of fresh carrots at the farmer's market in Union Square that were decadently sweet.  I also finely chopped the pecans into extremely tiny pieces, in order for them to fully incorporate into the batter. Finally, instead of using vanilla extract, I added the seeds of one vanilla bean which provided a wonderful flavor to the frosting. 

*All photographs by Alison