Trying to find a real carrot cake recipe is not as easy as you would think. My Mother-in-Law was having a big birthday party last Sunday and that was her only request.
Real carrot cake. With real ingredients.
After searching forEVER, I found a reliable source for the recipe. My friend Shaina from Food For Your Family has a beautiful recipe blog.
For the exterior, I did a version of my original Rosette Cake.
My beautiful mother-in-law was turning 67 (she really doesn’t look a day over 45!) and so piped out 67 flowers. Some are with the 1M tip (remember you can always use a 2D tip in place of the 1M) and the rest are with #27 tip from Wilton.
This is my favorite Cream Cheese frosting. (Its the best ever. Don’t click that link. You will be ruined for all other cream cheese frostings forever.)
Tips for this cake:
Once you have added the flour to the wet ingredients you want to be very gentle with the batter. You could even remove the bowl from the stand mixer and mix all dry ingredients in by hand!
If you do not want to add pineapple, you can add 1/4 more oil and omit the pineapple. You can also make other substitutions or changes like adding sweetened coconut (1/4 cup should do!) or using a little brown sugar.
Allow the cakes to cool completely in the pans before assembling cake. I like to use a chilled cake for assembly and a room-temperature frosting. You may need to level your cake prior to assembly. Get detailed instructions on that here.
The cream cheese frosting is SWEET. If you are hesitant, try tasting as you go and add in the confectioners sugar a cup at a time. You may be able to use less sugar.
BONUS: One way to make this cake AMAZING (and for the 21+ crowd) is to plump up your raisins in rum or the alcohol of choice.
Man, it was good. The flavor was delightful. The texture was exquisite. It’s perfection.
I think I just talked myself into making another one.
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Also… I made this yesterday. It’s a Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwich with BROWNIE (or Crowniewich) as the center. This recipe will change your life!
Beautifully adorned and I love the 60+ roses!!
No pineapple in your cake? I’m sure it was delicious anyways.
I am not a fan of pineapple in cake… just a personal preference! 🙂
But it has pineapple?
The cake is almost the same recipe as the one I use and they taste the same. Your cake is much prettier though!
How do you get cream cheese frosting to be so thick?
This looks delicious. I have a wonderful recipe also. The difference in mine is you add a can of crushed pineapple drain the juice so moist going to try this one.
i will make this cake for my husband’s birthday dinner. check my healthy recipes for dinner here : http://goo.gl/hFBtJT
When adding can of pineapple do you add the juice too? Thank you, Lelia
I drained the extra juice! 🙂
Do you add pineapple juice
Is the cake batter supposed to be really thick?
Theresa! I would add a little more pinneapplejuice!
I like ur cake recipe it’s easy to bake . Thanks to make it easy God bless u
I made this for my daughter’s birthday! She likes to eat as healthy as possible, so I substituted the oil with half coconut oil and half applesauce and used wheat flour. I also used green raisins and a whipped frosting. It was delicious!!! We all loved it!
Im going to try this, im a health nut ty
Hello,
I was wondering if this could be baked as a sheet cake? How big would the sheet have to be? Thank you 🙂
Yum, love carrot cake. never made it myself though, Thanks for posting sounds delcious. Simon
So I made this cake a week ago and let me say it was AMAZING. It was moist and texture was perfect .. This is by far one of the best carrot cakes I have ever had. Thank you so much for this great recipe.
Wonderful!!
Can I use applesauce sauce for moisture
For your carrot cake I noticed you said you usually use a chilled cake and room temp icing for assembly.
My husband’s birthday is tomorrow and he LOVES carrot cake! I want to make him one for tomorrow…should I make the cake today and have it chill in the fridge over night and then make the icing tomorrow or how long do you typically chill your cake for?
Can you serve immediately after icing or do you have to chill?
For carrot cake do I store in fridge or is it okay to leave out in a cake container?
Thank you in advance!
Really very nice recipe!!! An awesome and lovely cake get ready by this recipe. This cake will be the best gift for my dear friend at her birthday.
Made this for my son’s birthday. …. turned out hard! He even had a tough time cutting it. The taste was pretty good, but it was not moist at all. What went wrong?
Sounds like it might have been baked too long. This cake is incredibly moist.
Can you use cake flour instead of all-purpose or should you stick to all-purpose?