Carrot Cake

This carrot cake is very moist, because of the brown sugar. It has enough carrots to notice them, but not so much that it overwhelms the other flavors.

Created on 2020-12-12

Adapted from Carrot Cake by Laura Kieft @ Laura's Bakery (2020-12-02)

Recipe should yield this much: 14 cake slices.

Estimated time needed: At least 1 hours 42 minutes. At most 2 hours 4 minutes.

Ingredients

450 g carrots 450 g is about 7 carrots
400 g cream cheese
300 g flour gluten-free flour works as well
300 g powdered sugar
250 g unsalted butter room temperature
175 g vegetable oil we use sunflower oil
175 g brown sugar
75 g cashew nuts feel free to substitute with you favorite nuts or fruits, or leave it out all together
30 g white sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp baking powder
1.5 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground nutmeg
0.5 tsp ground ginger
0.5 tsp ground clove

Scaling

Percent %
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Timeline

Directions

⌛ Active time 12 minutes

  • 450 g carrots | 450 g is about 7 carrots

Grate carrots:

Peel or wash the carrots, and chop off the top. Then grate the carrots, either using a kitchen machine attachment, a grater or a peeler. Don't squeeze the juice out of the grated carrots, because we want the carrot juice in the cake as well.

⌛ Active time 3 minutes

  • 4 eggs
  • 175 g vegetable oil | we use sunflower oil
  • 1 tbsp vanilla extract
  • 175 g brown sugar
  • 30 g white sugar

Mix liquid ingredients and sugar:

Put the eggs and oil into a bowl, and stir them together. Add the sugar, and mix until combined.

⌛ Active time 2 minutes

  • 300 g flour | gluten-free flour works as well
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1.5 tbsp ground cinnamon
  • 1 tsp ground nutmeg
  • 0.5 tsp ground ginger
  • 0.5 tsp ground clove

Add dry ingredients:

Add the flour, baking powder and soda and spices to the bowl, and stir to combine.

⌛ Active time 3 minutes

  • 75 g cashew nuts | feel free to substitute with you favorite nuts or fruits, or leave it out all together

Chop the nuts:

Chop the cashews into small pieces, roughly the size of peppercorns.

⌛ Active time 1 minutes

Preheat oven:

175 ℃, no convection.

⌛ Active time 1 minutes

Add carrots and nuts to cake batter, and stir

⌛ Active time 2 minutes | Passive time 75 minutes

Batter into cake tin, into oven:

Pour the batter into a 22cm cake tin, and put it in the oven. The cake is done when a skewer comes out clean. This should take about 75 minutes. If you think the top of the cake is starting to get too brown, turn down the temperature by 10-20 ℃.

⌛ Active time 1 minutes | Passive time 3 minutes

  • 250 g unsalted butter | room temperature

Beat the butter:

While the cake is in the oven, we make the frosting. Start by adding room temperature butter to a bowl. Use the kitchen machine or hand mixer to beat the butter until it looks a bit more pale compared to when you started. This should take about 3 minutes.

⌛ Active time 1 minutes | Passive time 2 minutes

  • 400 g cream cheese
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract

Add more ingredients:

Add the cream cheese and vanilla extract to the butter, and mix it together.

⌛ Active time 3 minutes | Passive time 1 minutes

  • 300 g powdered sugar

Add powdered sugar:

To sweeten and stiffen the buttercream frosting, add powdered sugar to the mixture. You can add a bit less if you want a less sweet cream, or more to make it stiffer and sweeter.

⌛ Active time 1 minutes | Passive time 1 minutes

Cool the buttercream frosting:

Place the frosting in the fridge while you wait for the cake to finish baking and cool down. It is important that the cake has cooled down enough before adding the frosting so that the frosting doesn't melt. Do not add the frosting to the cake just yet.

⌛ Active time 1 minutes

Cut the cake:

When the cake has cooled down to room temperature, slice it in two horizontally to create two distinct cake layers.

⌛ Active time 10 minutes | Passive time 1 minutes

Assemble cake:

Place the bottom cake layer onto your serving plate. Add between a 1/4th and a 1/3rd of the frosting on the layer. Use a knife to spread it out evenly. Then place the other cake layer on top. Cover the entire cake with a thin layer of frosting, using as little frosting as you can. There will be some crumble coming off the cake. Be careful to not get too much of it into the bowl with frosting. Place the cake in the fridge to stiffen up the frosting before continuing, if needed. Add enough frosting to cover the side of the cake before covering the top with the rest.