Moist Carrot Cake With Cream Cheese Frosting.

Here you’ll find a moist carrot cake, packed with flavor with a delicious cream cheese frosting perfect for cake decorating. This cake is the perfect Thanksgiving or Easter dessert.

How to make this carrot cake with cream cheese frosting?

Possible adaptations of this recipe.

Ingredients and substitutions.

This cake recipe requires different ingredients, some of which could be substituted according to your needs :

• Granulated Sugar: while you could reduce it, I don’t recommend it as it would impact the texture of the cake.
• Vegetable Oil: you can actually use any flavorless oil of your choice, such as grapeseed or avocado oil.
• Eggs: If you don’t eat eggs, you can try to swap them with an egg replacer.
• Sour Cream: This is the secret weapon of this recipe. It allows the cake to stay deliciously moist for days. If you don’t have any on hand you can try to swap it with crème fraîche or full-fat yogurt, but the texture will be slightly different.
• Freshly Grated Carrots: please don’t use pre-shredded carrots as they are not fine enough for this cake recipe.
• Cake Flour: If you don’t have any cake flour on hand, you could try swapping it with an easy cake flour substitute. Keep in mind the texture of your cake will be a little bit different.
• Baking Powder & Baking Soda: these two act as leavening agents.
• Ground Cinnamon, Ground Nutmeg & Ground Ginger: this is the perfect combination of spices to give your carrot cake a warm and comforting flavor. You can also try to create your own spice blend, by adding ground cloves for example.

Size adaptation of your carrot cake.

I tend to write my recipes for 3 layers of 6-inch cake tins, which also happen to be perfect for 2 layers of 7-inch cake pans. You can easily adapt this recipe to bigger cake tins though. Simply multiply the grams measurements by:

• 1.75 to get 3 layers of 8-inch cake pans or 2 layers of 9-inch cake pans.
• 2.20 to get 3 layers of 9-inch cake pans or 2 layers of 10-inch cake pans.
• 2.70 to get 3 layers of 10-inch cake pans or 2 layers of 11-inch cake pans.

If you end up having to divide an egg, mix the white and the yolk of the egg, then, add the desired measurements to your cake batter.

Bake The Carrot Cake.

1. Preheat your oven to 330°F (165°C) and prepare 3 6-inch cake tins or 2 7-inch cake tins (i).
2. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, and ground ginger in a small bowl and set it aside.
3. In your mixing bowl, whisk the sugar and the oil together until combined.
4. Add one egg at a time, mixing until combined.
5. Next, incorporate the sour cream in your cake batter.
6. Then, add the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, and ground ginger) to the wet ingredients mixing until just combined.
7. Finally, fold in the grated carrots using a spatula.
8. Pour your cake batter evenly into your cake tins.
9. Bake it at 330F° (165C°) until a toothpick comes out clean (around 32 minutes).

Make The Cream Cheese Frosting.

1. Beat the room-temperature butter with a stand mixer (or hand mixer) for 5 minutes on high speed.
2. Add the sifted sugar in two addition and mix again for 5 minutes. It’s important that you do so to get the best results.
3. Finally, add the cream cheese and the vanilla essence and mix just until smooth.

Assemble Your Carrot Cake With The Cream Cheese Frosting.

1. Make sure your cake layers are completely cooled and leveled before assembling your cake.
2. Then, alternate each cake layer with a layer of cream cheese frosting.
3. Finally, cover and decorate your cake.

Baker’s secrets.

In order to make sure you end up with the best results, here are three baker’s secrets (that are not so secret really):

• I cannot stress enough how using a kitchen scale is a game-changer when baking. I know the cup system is very practical, but once you try weighing your ingredients, you’ll regret not having started sooner both in terms of texture and taste.
• Temperature is also another game changer. Always use room temperature ingredients unless stated otherwise and preheat your oven, you’ll taste the difference.
• Finally, do not overmix your cake batter, once you’ve added the eggs. Honestly, nine times out of ten, when someone has a problem with a cake recipe, it’s because they overmixed their cake batter.

Can you make your carrot layer cake ahead?

You can easily make this carrot cake with cream cheese frosting ahead. Spreading the process of a layer cake makes it way more manageable, especially for beginners. You have several options:

• You can freeze the cake layers for up to 6 weeks. Only make sure they’re tightly wrapped in plastic wrap.
• You could also make the frosting ahead and freeze it in plastic wrap or an air-tight container for up to a month. Once thawed, whip it again to allow it to come back together

Whatever option you choose, let the cake layers, the frosting, or the entire cake come back to room temperature before serving.