Carrot Cake! With a hint of cinnamon, soft crunch from nuts, ultra moist crumb and piled high with the fluffiest ever cream cheese frosting, this has the perfect texture and flavour. Easy and foolproof, absolutely to-die for!
Carrot Cake
This Carrot Cake is from a reader, the lovely Dorothy of Tennessee in the States, a long-time reader of RecipeTin Eats. She promised it was dead easy, foolproof, ultra moist with a heavenly flavour.
One bite was all it took for me to ditch the recipe I’d been using all my life up until that moment. This was The One. Hands down the best Carrot Cake I have ever had in my life!
I love it so much, in fact, that I’ve also just published a cupcake version too!
Why you’ll love this Carrot Cake recipe
The cake itself is not too sweet, with less sugar than most recipes;
The cake is moist, but not doughy or “mud-cake” like;
The subtle crunch from pecans and coconut in the cake. The textural contrast with the crumb is really terrific; and
There is plenty of frosting!!
What you need for Carrot Cake
Here’s what you need for this Carrot Cake. The “secret ingredients” in this are:
Crushed pineapple (canned) – this adds to the moistness of the crumb, as well as sweetness and flavour. We’re going to use all of the pineapple and some of the juice; and
Coconut and walnuts (or pecans) – they add a subtle soft crunch which provides great textural contrast in this cake that has a very soft crumb.
No butter! Did you know – oil makes cakes moist and butter adds flavour. In this recipe, we don’t need butter because there’s all sorts of flavour from the other ingredients so we just use oil.
How to make Carrot Cake
Just use a standard box grater to grate the carrot. Then it’s as simple as mixing the Dry ingredients, mixing the Wet, then mixing them together.
I’ve made a 2 layer cake here but you could also make one rectangle single layer cake.
Cream Cheese Frosting for Carrot Cake
There’s just no question – fluffy cream cheese frosting is the BEST frosting for Carrot Cake! Here’s what you need:
Cream cheese – use BLOCK, not the spreadable cream cheese in tubs (too soft);
Softened butter – softened but not super soft / borderline melting;
Icing sugar aka powdered sugar – 🇦🇺use soft icing sugar, NOT pure icing sugar (which is used for things like royal icing ie sets hard); and
Vanilla.
How to make cream cheese frosting
There’s no secret trick to making fluffy cream cheese frosting. Just beat, beat, beat until fluffy! It will take a good 3 to 5 minutes to make the frosting super fluffy.
TIP for even layers (without trimming)
No cake comes out of the oven with a perfectly level surface.
But rather than bothering to cut the top to make it level, just flip the cake upside down before frosting.
You’ll still get a slight dome in the middle with this cake but it’s less pronounced than if you frosted it without turning it upside down.
And so I present to you, Dorothy’s Carrot Cake, with 2 layers, though it’s marvellous as a single layer sheet pan rectangle cake – goes further and there’s a thicker layer of frosting on the surface.
Thank you Dorothy, for sharing your wonderful recipe with us!!! I’m so honoured! – Nagi x
Watch how to make it
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Carrot Cake (Easy and ultra moist!)
Ingredients
- 440g / 20 oz can crushed pineapple , drained but RESERVE juice (Note 1)
- 1/4 cup (65 ml) reserved canned pineapple juice (from canned pineapple above)
Wet Ingredients
- 3/4 cup (185 ml) milk , at room temperature (full or low fat)
- 1 tsp white vinegar (or lemon juice or other clear vinegar, (Note 2)
- 3 eggs (55g/2oz each)
- 1 1/2 cups (265g) brown sugar (loosely packed)
- 1/2 cup (125 ml) vegetable oil (or canola)
Dry Ingredients
- 2 cups (300g) flour , plain / all purpose
- 2 tsp baking soda (aka bi carb soda, Note 3) (NOT BAKING POWDER)
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 tsp cinnamon powder
Stir Ins
- 2 cups grated carrot , about 2 carrots, peeled (Note 4)
- 1/4 cup coconut , shredded or desiccated (plain / unsweetened)
- 1/2 cup walnuts or pecans , roughly chopped
Frosting
- 180g / 6oz cream cheese , at room temperature (Note 5)
- 225g / 1 cup unsalted butter , softened
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 4 cups (480g) icing sugar / powdered sugar , sifted if clumpy (Note 6)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F (all oven types). Grease and line two 20-22.5 cm/8 – 9" round pans OR a 9 x 13" / 22 x 33cm pan with baking/parchment paper. (Note 7)
- Drain crushed pineapple well, reserving the juice. Measure out 1/4 cup of pineapple juice.
- Whisk Dry ingredients in a large bowl.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together the milk, vinegar, eggs, sugar, oil and the 1/4 cup pinepple juice from Step 2.
- Stir in carrot, crushed pineapple, coconut and pecans into the Wet ingredients bowl.
- Pour Wet into Dry ingredients, stir until flour is incorporated.
- Pour into prepared pan(s). Bake round cakes for 35 minutes, rectangle cake for 40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean and the cake is golden on top.
- Rest for 10 minutes in the pan before turning out onto a cooling rack. Frost once completely cool.
Cream Cheese Frosting
- Beat together cream cheese, butter and vanilla until smooth. Then beat in the icing sugar in 2 batches until it is well incorporated and the frosting is fluffy – about 3 minutes on speed 7 stand mixer.
- Flip one cake upside down on serving platter (for flat surface). Spread with 1/3 frosting. Place 2nd cake upside down on frosting. Frost top and sides with remaining frosting.
Storage
- If cooler than 25°C/77°C and not humid, ok to keep cake in airtight container not in fridge. If very humid OR warmer than 25°C/77°C, store in fridge (Note 8).
Recipe Notes:
Nutrition Information:
Originally published April 2016. Updated with new photos, and new recipe video added!
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Life of Dozer
Project Manager Dozer on duty for the video shoot! Quality Assurance is his speciality 😂
And here he is from when I originally published this Carrot Cake – no surprises, Dozer lurking under the shoot table! I’m not going to lie to you. He scored a big hunk of carrot cake. His bottom can afford it. Mine can’t.
This is the best carrot cake recipe ever! I’m new to baking and yet managed to turn out a delicious and pretty good looking cake for my son’s birthday.
This recipe is so, so good. I recently made it as the top tier of a 3 tier wedding cake and it was incredible! Not only is it dairy free, it’s very delicious and accompanied with SMBC, it’s delicious!
The cake was moist and flavourful with the sweetness just right. Thank you for sharing this recipe.
Do you have to use parchment paper if using 9×13 pan?
I could really taste the veg oil which is off-putting, but otherwise would be really nice. Next time I’d add less oil. Frosting was really good, but I did add much less sugar (about 1 cup), I would taste as you go until you get the right sweetness for yourself
Beautiful cake . Cooked in a Bundt tin for 40 mins and it turned out exactly like the recipe .
A lovely carrot cake, my tins were a little shallower than the instructions so just split equally between three of them and cooked for 28 mins instead. Everyone raved how delicious this recipe is.
Lovely carrot cake recipe & everyone thought it was really tasty! My tins I thought may have been too shallow, so I just split across 3 x 20cm tins & reduced the cooking time to 28 mins.
It was a very humid day and my frosting was still a bit runny after measuring & adding the icing sugar by weight and wouldn’t whip up properly, so added gradually another cup or so.
Best carrot cake ever! Hands down. I have tried a countless of other recipes but wasn’t ever getting the flavour I was looking for. Not until I stumbled across this. Baked one for work party, and everyone raved about it. Had to bake another for a birthday party and again hardly any crumbs were left. Baking couldn’t get any easier and cake couldn’t get any tastier.
Thank you for sharing this recipe!
Hi Nagi, I have been using for recipes for about 5 years now. I print them out and put them into plastic sleeves and into an indexed folder. I have to say that I use them frequently! Everytime I am looking for something different I always go to your website. Your recipes are fabulous!!
The cake is delicious but the frosting is too sweet. 4 cups of icing sugar, hides the flavour of the cream cheese and you only taste sugar. The frosting also lacks a bit of lemon juice to make it a bit tangy.
I love carrot cake but have never used this recipe because I didn’t fancy the pineapple nor the coconut. But, I decided to give it a chance and made it exactly as per the recipe and it is hands down the best carrot cake I have ever had. Thank you Nagi for the details and care you add to all your recipes.
I am looking forward to making this! I would love to make it GF. Should I add 2 cups of GF plain flour?
Hi Vanessa, I have made this GF twice now. I use 2 cups GF plain flour plus about 1 cup almond meal to get cake batter consistency. Cake turns out very moist and needed to be cooked for a lot longer than recommended. Worth the effort!
Could I substitute rice bran oil for the vegetable/canola oil? I’d rather not buy another oil but will if I must 🙂
Also, my partner and I are huge fans of your recipes!! Yours are always the recipes I gravitate towards if you have something I’m looking for because they never let me down. I’m also one of those people that read 3+ recipes and then put together what I think would be best. I NEVER do that with your recipes and yours alone because they’re always perfect!
I used rice bran oil and it turned out perfectly 👌🏻
This is the absolute best .I made this for my hubby’s birthday and he loved it and so did my neighbour (leftovers)every single recipe of yours I’ve made and loved .I even bought your book. Thankyou for making me look like a professional cook
This is now my go to carrot cake recipe, absolutely delicious. The pineapple makes it moist without being too sweet. Always do as a single layer cake as I am lazy, but still fabulous.
Wow Nagi, this cake is perfection!
As are all your recipes. Thank you so much!💖
I challenge you to find a better carrot cake recipe
Super great recipe! Not a great baker myself so I’m always skeptical about baking cakes but I had a few carrots leftover so I decided to try this recipe. EVERYONE LOVED IT AND SO DID I!!😊
Hello! I made this cake for the second time today. The first was for a work party, and so many people told me it was the best, but I could not confirm, since it was gone before I got to taste it. So I had to make another one for Thanksgiving, and it is really the best! We have some coconut haters in the family, so I did leave that out, still so so good. Thanks!
I’m not a baker, I’ve recently made your carrot cake and your upside down pineapple cake. Both turned out perfect and were absolutely delicious. Husbands thinks I’ve. Even lying to him all these years and really could bake all along.