Carrot Cake, Baby

When I brought home a jar of baby food, it elicited a raised eyebrow from my HLM. Nothing to fear, it was only because the current issue of Cook's Country magazine has a recipe for carrot cake that uses strained carrots in place of some of the oil, to make it a bit healthier, but retain the desired light and cakey texture and carrot flavour. I looked up a few other similar carrot cake recipes online, but was dismayed to see that most of them use the carrot baby food to eliminate using any shredded carrot. While I will admit that grating carrots is the most tedious part of making a carrot cake, I really hate to think of giving up that textural aspect of the cake.

This afternoon I threw this little baby together,
and it's totally living up to expectations: light and carroty and spicy... I made my usual cream cheese icing (from the Company's Coming Cakes book) because the one from Cook's Country uses marshmallow cream, and that's not exactly something I keep around the house. (Huge blocks of cream cheese, on the other hand...)

In the meantime, I have been making slow and steady progress both on the quilt and on the shawl (Clapotis is being saved for Pub Knitting, at the moment.)
I am into the fourth chart of the shawl -- it's hard to estimate a percentage complete on this one, not only because it is growing in a triangle shape, but also because the ruffle will have a disproportionate number of stitches compared to the shawl. Suffice to say that I have used maybe half of a 500 yard ball of yarn, and the pattern calls for nearly 2000 yards. Fortunately I am enjoying it a lot -- it's reminding me of all the other lace projects I have in my queue.