Sugared Vegetables

Last week, my roommate Stephanie and I decided to sign up for Urban Organic home produce delivery. Basically, every week they deliver a box full of whatever fruit and vegetables are ripest right to your door. It's a great way to ensure you get plenty of tasty green things, and it's always fun to see what all you'll end up with in the box. For example, after the first delivery, Stephanie made some hearty soup with all the kale we got, then used the leftover veggies in a pasta dish. This week, among other things, we had quite a few carrots. Naturally, we figured the only proper way to treat this super healthy root was to smoother it in sugar and cream cheese frosting.

Yes, it was carrot cake time.

Now, Steph and I are close friends. And we get along very well. But if there's one thing I've learned over the last few weeks it's that I am no match for her in the kitchen. Sure, I can whip something together, but she can cook. So I've come to accept my role as su-chef, focusing primarily on preparation, and she's agreed to (mostly) look the other way at my unique and sometimes messy ways of cooking. Thus, I was put to work grating our giant bag of carrots. With both of us on the project, it actually all mixed up pretty quick, and the baking itself flew by too (with the help of a few episodes of Dexter). The frosting turned out to be a bit of an issue though. We probably needed at least twice the powered sugar we had, but neither of us wanted to head out for more (even though the store's only on the corner). So it sort of turned into a cream cheese glaze. The runniness wasn't helped by our impatience to ice it either; hot cakes equal runny frosting. But it tasted delicious nonetheless, and it even looked pretty decent in the end, right before we dug in (see Stephanie about to have at it with the knife, above). My hands are still faintly orange, and we're still finding tiny shreds of carrot all over the kitchen, but it was so, so worth it.