Orange Carrot Cake with Orange Yogurt Cream Cheese Icing

I took a look through a few carrot cake recipes that looked good:
Eggs on Sunday’s Solid Gold Carrot Cake
CD Kitchen’s Orange Carrot Cake
A Merrier World’s Carrot Cake
Epicurious’ Carrot-Orange Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
Baking Bites’ One Bowl Carrot Cake

…and decided that Baking Bites’ carrot cake looked closest to what I wanted. Of course, I doubled it and modified a bit to use up what we had on hand…carrots that didn’t make it into last Sunday’s roast, two oranges left over from Jaret’s booth partner at the Outdoor Adventure Show, and some mandarin oranges that needed to be eaten soon.

Orange Carrot Cake with Orange Yogurt Cream Cheese Icing

2 c. brown sugar, packed
1/2 c. butter, melted and cooled
4 large eggs
1 t. vanilla
4 T. vegetable oil
Juice of two oranges
Zest of one orange
3 c. all-purpose flour
2 t. baking soda
2 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. nutmeg
1/2 t. salt
3-4 large carrots, grated

Stir together butter and sugar until smooth. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well, then add oil, orange juice, and zest and mix. Sift half of the flour into the bowl and mix together. Add the soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt to the remaining flour in the measuring cup and whisk together well with a fork, then sift this into the bowl, mixing quickly. Fold in the shredded carrots. Pour into your choice of non-stick baking pans (loaf, square, round, or muffin). Bake in a 325 to 350 degree oven (depends on your oven) until golden and knife inserted in middle of the cake comes out clean. Serve with icing.

Don’t bother with icing recipes that call for a gazillion cups of icing sugar; they are sickeningly sweet and all you really need to do is soften up your cream cheese a bit and sweeten it. The flavours come out SO much more nicely that way. Trust me. It’s yummy.

Orange Yogurt Cream Cheese Icing

1 regular package of cream cheese (8 ounces, I believe)
2 T. butter
1/2 c. sugar (icing or regular)
1/4 c. yogurt
Juice from one or two mandarin oranges

Whip all ingredients together with hand mixer until smooth and all sugar is dissolved. Adjust amounts to your own taste and to the desired consistency.