Best Frosting EVER!

I (AK) am a teacher.  More specifically a special education teacher.  I teach students who are diagnosed with behavior disorders. They don't always have the easiest home lives, nor do they have a lot of people in their lives who care about them.  So -- I take whatever chance I get to let my knows know that someone cares.  Often times I do this by baking. 

HSPE (aka the new WASL) testing -- I made yummy brain food treats for the kids.  Birthdays -- they get to pick their birthday treat that I make and bring in.  Good week -- why not bring in treats?!

This led me to creating a YUMMY carrot cake.  We also had a potluck at school and the kids had a good week, so why not bring something in?

I had made a carrot cake from Cybele in the past and my students loved it.  But I wanted to try another recipe.  So I found this one: Living Without's Carrot Cake.  But as usual I changed it up.  To save space, I will just let you know what I changed.....

1) Instead of the 1/2 cup oil I used: 1/4 cup shortening (my usual Spectrum) and 1/4 cup Coconut Oil (I wanted some extra flavor and coconut oil works great without making it too rich)

2) I used my usual GF flour blend [here] and I did use eggs (not replacer)

3) The FROSTING!  It turned out so good that my co-workers just kept eating it off the top of the cake!
[A few weeks ago I found flavored goat cheese in the grocery store.  This was not just any goat cheese.  It was a cream cheese substitute.  The flavors were: coffee, fig, honey, and cinnamon.  Since I can handle goat (and sheep) products, I bought some to try.  It was delicious!]
So I decided to use the rest in my frosting since carrot cake traditionally has cream cheese frosting.  I luckily had bought the cinnamon goat cheese.  I used about 1/4 cup of the goat cheese and probably about the same amount of shortening.  I am really bad about measuring when it comes to my frosting!  I used an entire bag of powdered sugar (I think this ends up to about 9 cups).  I also added some cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg (which is not part of a nut!).  So for my recipe:

Cinnamon Cream "Cheese" Frosting
1/4 C cinnamon goat cheese (I think the brand is Montchevre)
1/4 C Spectrum Shortening
about 1/4 C hot water (don't need to heat it up on the stove, just use hot tap water) -- and add a tablespoon at a time (you may need to add more or less to get the consistency that you want)*
8-9 C powdered sugar
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t nutmeg
1/2 t ginger

1) Put all ingredients into a mixer (I used my Kitchen Aid), and about 1-2 tablespoons of water and mix away!  Add more water as needed.

And enjoy -- don't eat too much of the frosting, you may actually need to frost the cake!  Let us know what you think!

*Depending on what you are making, you may want a runnier or thicker frosting.  When I frost cakes, I want it to be able to spread easily but when I frost cupcakes, I want the frosting a little thicker so it stays on top of the cupcake.  Just add water one tablespoon at at time so you don't end up with super runny frosting!  Experiment with flavors and amounts of water to powdered sugar to shortening ratio.  Frosting is hard to mess up!