Surprise Carrot Cake

With one of my friend's sister, we decided to make this Surprise Carrot Cake out of America's Favorite Brand Name Recipes.  The idea of making a carrot cake sounded good.  I haven't made one since August and the idea of making one sounded good.  I was a little skeptical of the recipe...America's Favorite Brand Name Recipes cook book...not necessarily a tested recipe, but I decided to give it a whirl.

Ingredients
1 8-ounce package Philadelphia Brand Cream Cheese, softened
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg beaten
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2 cups flour
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup oil
3 eggs, beaten
3 cups shredded carrot
1/2 cup chopped nuts

Directions
1. Combine cream cheese, sugar and egg, mixing until well blended.  Set aside.
2. Combine dry ingredients.  Add combined oil and eggs, mixing until moistened.  Fold in carrots and nuts.  Reserve 2 cups of batter; pour remaining batter into greased and flour 9-inch bundt pan.  Pour cream cheese mixture over batter; carefully spoon reserved batter over cream cheese mixture, spreading to cover.  Bake at 350 F, 55 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean.
3. Cool 10 minutes, remove from pan.
4. Cool thoroughly  Sprinkle with powdered sugar


Overall, the cake was okay.  I actually blame the recipe this time more than the chefs.  (How unusual right?)  I give this recipe 2.3 out of 5 stars.  The cake was moist but was lacking flavor.  More cinnamon and nutmeg could have been used.  The cream cheese layer at the bottom of the cake wasn't enough.  It too tasted bland.  I think the recipe was executed well.   One thing to note though was I was highly concerned with the layering of the carrot cake batter and cream cheese batter.  The main problem we encountered upon execution of this recipe was covering the cream cheese layer with carrot cake batter.  The cream cheese was lighter than the carrot cake batter layer...so the carrot cake kept sinking beneath the cream cheese.  In the end we managed to get some carrot cake batter on top of the cream cheese batter.  However, I was nervous when I placed the cake in the oven.