Best Carrot Cake Recipe

This Best Carrot Cake Recipe will have you coming back for seconds. It is loaded with carrots, pineapple, coconut, and walnuts, making it an irresistible dessert that I have cravings for. Did I mention the cream cheese frosting? Well, it is the perfect finishing touch!

Serving a cake like this is not too difficult, and you will get rave reviews on how wonderful it tastes and what a great moist texture it has. Want more cake ideas? Try our Best Angel Fruit Cake Recipe (it is a real show stopper) or our Glazed Pistachio Bundt Cake.

This gorgeous Carrot Cake has two cake layers, but you can increase it to four by baking more cakes or slicing the two cakes in half. This does make the cake harder to ice, and you have the potential of it leaning. I kept it simple and did two layers which are more than sufficient for any party or get-together.

What Goes into the Best Carrot Cake Recipe?

To make this cake batter, it only takes simple ingredients. For me, it isn't carrot cake without pineapple, walnuts, and coconut, but if you don't like those ingredients, you can omit one or use substitutions like pecans for the walnuts. Volume-wise I wouldn't omit them all without increasing the carrots to replace the other ingredients.

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For example, if you took out the pineapple and coconut, you would increase the carrots to 4 cups from 2 cups.

I like to use white sugar instead of brown sugar for this recipe, as it comes out dark and delicious already.

The addition of the cinnamon in this cake makes for a perfect balance for the carrots and fruit to tie it all together.

Ingredients

Cake:

AP flour

Granulated sugar

Salt

Baking soda

Cinnamon

Eggs

Vegetable oil

Vanilla

Crushed pineapple (drained)

Shredded carrots

Sweetened shredded coconut

Walnuts + more crushed for decorating (about 1/2 cup)

I have been generous with the amount of frosting. I find there is nothing worse than icing a cake and trying to skimp to get it all finished.

Cream Cheese Frosting:

12 oz cream cheese (softened)

3/4 cup butter (softened)

4 cups icing sugar (this is also called powdered sugar or confectioner's sugar)

3/4 tsp lemon extract (optional)

1 ½ tsp vanilla extract

How to Make a Layered Carrot Cake

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Cut 2 rounds of parchment paper, so they fit in the bottom of 2 9-inch cake pans. Wrap your pans with bake even cake strips, as per instructions. These strips will keep your cakes flat when baking.

Spray each pan with non-stick cooking spray, then place a parchment round in the bottom of each pan (this will ensure that your cakes won't stick). Set aside.

In a medium-sized bowl whisk all the dry ingredients together until well combined.

In a large bowl of a standup mixer with a paddle attachment, add the eggs and beat until they are frothy, then slowly pour in the oil while continuing to mix.

Add the vanilla, grated carrots, crushed pineapple, coconut, and chopped nuts and stir until well mixed.

Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients while mixing at a low speed. Continue to mix until all the dry ingredients are incorporated, scraping down the sides of the mixing bowl with a rubber spatula as needed.

Baking The Carrot Cake

Divide the batter evenly between the 2 prepared cake pans.

Bake in the preheated oven for 35 – 45 minutes or until a cake tester inserted into the center of the pan comes out clean. You can also use a toothpick inserted to make sure the cake is done.

Cool the cakes in the pans for 15 minutes.

Using a sharp knife, loosen the cakes from the side of the pans and invert and remove them. Allow the cakes to rest on a cooling rack until the cakes cool completely. Then peel off the parchment paper carefully. Trim the cakes flat if you didn't use the bake even strips (they truly are amazing but optional to use).

Making the Cream Cheese Frosting

While the cakes cool, make the cream cheese frosting.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the cream cheese and butter until smooth.

Add the vanilla and lemon extract (if using).

Slowly add the icing sugar and beat until smooth.

Prepare your cake stand; take a piece of wax paper large enough to completely cover your cake stand with 2-3 inches overhang on each side.

Cut the wax paper in half and cut each half in half again.

Place the 4 pieces of wax paper on the cake stand so they overlap. They should cover the top surface of the stand with some overhang so you can grab them later.

Take a small amount, about 1/3 cup for each color (orange and green for the carrots), and set it aside.

Icing The Cake

Once the cakes are cooled, place one cake right side up on a cake stand on top of the wax paper and frost the top.

Place the second cake on top of the first cake, so the tops of the cakes are together.

Frost the top and sides of the cake, making a crumb coat first. To do this, use just a small amount of icing. To frost the sides, place the icing on the spatula and turn the cake stand as opposed to trying to drag the spatula against the cake.

Place the cake in the refrigerator to chill for 20 – 30 minutes. This now allows you to ice a cake beautifully with no crumbs coming to the surface.

You can now continue to frost the cake with the remaining icing.

Finish decorating your carrot cake as you like. You may add chopped walnuts to the side of the cake or top. Or ice like we did with small carrots randomly placed around the cake with small amounts of crushed walnuts.

Decorating the Carrot Cake

For the carrots, I originally was going to use a standard round tip and piping bag but found it was just too big, so I just used a piping bag and cut off the smallest tip, so the opening was 1/8″.

Starting to decorate with carrot bottoms randomly around the cake.

Starting with the orange at the widest part of the carrot pipe down in a back and forth squiggle, making sure to go smaller until you get to a point.

The green stems were similar where you start on one side and pipe one continuous squiggle making the one in the center longer.

Finished Best Carrot Cake Recipe on a cake stand

Apply the walnuts randomly around the cake, little by little, filling in the spots. Do this carefully not to smudge the carrots or ruin the icing on the cake.

Finally, gently pull on each piece of wax paper so they slide out from under the cake (this helps to keep the cake stand neat and clean!)

Refrigerate until serving but bring out about 20-30 minutes prior. Enjoy!

Why use Bake Even Cake Strips?

Showing a bake even cake strip around a pan.

This strip that you see above around the cake pan is a game-changer if you want cakes to bake evenly and all the way through. It also allows you to bake a cake flat, so no trimming is needed. These cakes then ice like a dream. The affiliate link is above if you would like to purchase them.

All you do is soak these strips in water for 5 minutes and then wrap them around your cake pan. You can use them with 8-inch, 9-inch, 10-inch and 12-inch round pans.

They are designed to bake cakes evenly with no cracks, splitting, or crowns and make the icing of a cake so much easier. See how nice and flat our cakes are, plus they turn out moist and delicious because they are baked evenly. There is nothing worse than a cake that is hard on the edges and not baked in the middle.

Square photo or a carrot cake on a cake stand.

Pin it HERE!!

Pin it HERE!!

Yield: 10 Servings

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