Carrot Cake with Honey Praline

Super moist and perfectly spiced carrot cake with a cream cheese frosting and honey-coated nuts.

Preheat the oven to 350°F / 175°C. Butter a 7" springform pan, then coat the inside with sugar.
Wash, peel, and shred the carrots. Make sure to weigh the carrots after shredding to ensure you have 150g.
To a medium sized mixing bowl, add the carrots, sugar, vegetable oil, sour cream, and eggs. Whisk vigorously until well combined.
Add in the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and salt. Gently whisk the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients just until the last streak of flour dissapears.
Pour the cake batter into your prepared pan. Bake for 45-50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out with only a few moist crumbs.

In the meantime, make the praline. Add your nuts of choice, honey, sugar, cinnamon, and butter to a small saucepan.
Set the mixture over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Continue occasionally stirring the mixture until the nuts start to brown (~5 min.)
Remove the nuts from the heat and pour the mixture out on to a cutting board, pushing it down into a flat even layer. Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, with a hand or stand mixer, beat together the cream cheese, butter, and salt until the mixture is light and fluffy.
Add in half of the powdered sugar and beat until combined. Then, beat in the rest of the powdered sugar along with the vanilla bean paste. Continue beating the mixture for an additional 2 minutes.
Keep the frosting stored in the fridge until you're ready to assemble the cake. (*You may need to let it sit out at room temp for 10-20 minutes before frosting the cake if the frosting gets too cold.)

Chop up the honey praline nuts into smaller pieces.
Once the cake has fully cooled to room temperature, cut it in half horizontally.
Set the bottom half of the cake back into the springform pan and evenly spread ½ of the cream cheese frosting over it. Then, top the cream cheese with ~⅔ of the nut mixture.
Place the top half of the cake on top, then remove the cake from the springform pan. Top the cake with the remaining cream cheese frosting (I used a large round tip to pipe the frosting on top) and with the remaining honey praline. Slice, serve, and enjoy!