The perfectly moist and sweet carrot cake that is conveniently also full of carrots, pineapple, applesauce, walnuts, coconut and raisins.
If making the frosting, start soaking the cashews.
Trace two 8-inch cake pans onto parchment paper and cut out. Line bottoms of pans with parchment and grease the sides. To make 12 cupcakes instead, grease a muffin pan. Set pans aside. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Stir wet ingredients together.
In a separate bowl, whisk dry ingredients together. Add wet ingredients, and stir until well-combined. Do not over-stir.
Pour batter evenly into the two cake pans. Bake at 350 for 28-30 minutes, until middle bounces back if you press on it with your finger.
Let cool completely and remove from pans. Frost with your favorite cream cheese frosting, or the frosting listed below.
Decorate with chopped walnuts or pumpkin seeds, flaked coconut, grated carrots, or carrot curls.
While cake is baking, combine all the ingredients in a high-speed blender or small bullet/twister jar and blend until very smooth. Let chill for 30 minutes, then blend again. The longer it chills, the less runny it will be. This frosting is slightly runny in nature, not ideal for piping, but delicious! Using coconut sugar or maple syrup will make the frosting a light brown color. Honey or regular powdered sugar makes it more white.