The Prospect's Carrot Cake

A couple of summers ago, I took my mom to an old restaurant in Kansas City called Californo’s.  I had grown up coming to this restaurant, but we hadn’t been to it in years.  My mom ordered a Prospect Salad, which was butter lettuce, hearts of palm, toasted pecans and blue cheese.  She told me that when she had first moved to the area as a young editor for The Kansas City Star, she and fellow journalists would eat at a restaurant called The Prospect of Westport and always would order this salad.  The Prospect has since closed down, but in the 1970s and 80s it was the hot restaurant in Kansas City, serving Crepes St. Gabriel and lamb curry with eggplant.  Like The Prospect Salad, the restaurant's recipe for Carrot Cake was "so popular that there are still restaurants today...selling a version of it."  When I pulled out my Beyond Parsley cookbook, I was thrilled to find the recipe in there.  So I made a happy afternoon of baking a homemade carrot cake. 

Carrot Cake Recipe

1 1/4 cups oil

2 cups sugar

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

4 eggs

1 pound carrots, peeled and grated

1 cup coarsely chopped pecans

1 cup dark raisins

Combine oil and sugar in bowl; beat well.  Sift together dry ingredients.  Sift half the dry ingredients into sugar mixture; blend well.  Sift in remaining dry ingredients, alternating with eggs; mix well after each addition.  Stir in carrots, pecans, and raisins.  Pour into lightly oiled 10 inch tube pan.  Bake in preheated 325 degree oven about one hour and 10 minutes.  Cool upright in pan.

Frosting Recipe:

4 ounces of shredded coconut

1 8 ounce package cream cheese, room temperature

1 cup butter, room temperature

3 cups confectioners sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

Toast coconut at 300 degrees for 10-15 minutes or until lightly browned.  Cool.  Combine cream cheese and butter in food processor or mixer.  Add confectioners sugar and vanilla and mix until perfectly smooth.  Refrigerate if too soft to spread immediately.  Frost top of cake and pat toasted coconut onto the frosting.