Hawaiian Carrot Cake with Coconut Icing

This is the first recipe I tried that I found on Pinterest. Yes, I actually try the recipes that I pin and so far they've all been great and this was one of them. My dad loves pineapple and coconut (that's another thing I get from him) and when I asked him to guess what kind of dessert I was making he guessed correctly on the first try that it had pineapple and coconut in it. He had no idea what form my dessert was taking but he guessed the most important part right away and that was all that mattered after that.
So anyway, here's the link to the original recipe...
http://sweetapolita.com/2011/04/hawaiian-carrot-cake-with-coconut-icing/
I'm not going to list all the ingredients/method in as much detail this time as I followed the original recipe exactly so you can follow the recipe in the link provided above. Anyway, here's my adventure with yet another layer cake.

First, I traced my round cake pans (9" I believe) on some parchment paper and then cut out the circles - on the inside of the pencil line - and put those in the bottom of my pans once they were sprayed with Pam. This makes it so easy to take the cakes out once they are baked and have cooled slightly, they just fall right out. Once arts and crafts were over, I started grating my carrots. This took a while as I still don't have a food processor so I had to use a box grater.

I think this ended up being about six carrots if I remember correctly.

Dry ingredients and carrots, ready to go.

Skip to, cake batter ready for the oven. I sometimes forget to take pictures when I'm busy making something and only remember after the fact, however you're not missing much here as cake batter in the pan looks the same as it does in the mixing bowl ;)

So while the cakes were baking I made the icing. Standard cream cheese icing just with the addition of coconut.

One of the finished cakes, lines courtesy of my cooling rack. Cutting these babies in half was sooooo much easier than that cheesecake I had to cut in half for the Red Velvet Cake I made (see the second post on this blog for that escapade).

Beginning of the assembly. This was the first layer and next time I make this cake I'm going to add more icing on this layer as my cake ended up being slightly top heavy. There is a heck of a lot of icing used for this recipe so I would maybe even try to measure it out evenly into four parts just for better symmetry of the cake.

And finished product (after burning my first batch of coconut, oops!). Also this cake is a pain in the you know what to transport. I found another version of this recipe that said that the cake was great to transport. LIES I TELL YOU!!! I think I had about seven anxiety attacks on the way to my parent's place with this thing in my lap and my husband at the wheel. By the time we got to my parent's house the cake had a bit of a gangster lean going on and my hands had crumbs, icing and coconut all over them. However, the cake was a hit so I guess the trouble of transport was worth it?

Alright, time for this girl to get ready for work. Hope everyone is having a great summer so far, I know I am!

- A