Cake #18 - Pecan Spice Layer Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

We went to the beach for a week and I took advantage of my hobby by knocking 2 more cakes off the list...which if anyone is keeping score, still puts us way off track from actually finishing all 30 cakes by Labor Day.  Not to mention, Mindy had her baby Juliet a couple weeks ago, and Juliet is not so good with a blender yet, so she is no help!

Alas, we are also getting down to a random assortment of cakes - many of which seem too heavy and holiday/winter-like.  I was really not looking forward to this one, but then thought, Hey!  We are going to North Carolina and there are all those veggie and nut stands on the sides of the road on the way down.   This recipe leads with "a Southern treat" or something.  Bingo!  I will make this cake and pawn it off on all of Ben's relative -using only the freshest pecans from the side of the road.

Well, okay smarty-pants, apparently NC is not know for pecans.  Peanuts, sure - lots of places sold those - but I guess I need to go to Texas for Pecans.  Therefore, my cake was made with the store-brand Food Lion pecans - though I did go to the trouble of toasting them myself.

My first cake with an ocean view!

Baking in a rented beach house is funny.  It's better than camping, but a little like grab-bag.  I anticipated some trouble in this department, so while we were leaving the house for our 12 hour drive, I ran back in to grab a few provisions...funny Ben did not kill me when he saw me grinding cloves with the mortar & pestle while holding the car keys and wearing my purse.  But, this is a spice cake for goodness sake, if I had to buy all 37 spices for a pinch of each, it would have cost more than the chocolate cognac cake from New Year's Eve.  I brilliantly packed them all in a baggie and was on my way.

The cake was very straight forward to make.  I did cheat by not slicing each cake in half making it a "4" layer cake as in the picture.  I worried there would have been too little frosting - and there would have been - and it would have been a bear to slice there and frost - very crumbly texture.  Oh, but the frosting...THIS WAS THE BEST CREAM CHEESE FROSTING EVER.  I probably think this b/c it has hints of lemon in it - and I left out about a 1/2-3/4 cup of powdered sugar.  I should use this one in lieu of all my other cream cheese frostings.