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.
Made this cake without the nuts as hubby doesn’t like them in his food! I wasn’t keen on carrot in cake but both of us loved this moist easy to make cake. Most of my meals are from your site and your book, always a success and I am by no means a good cook. Thank you for making meals so easy to follow and delicious to eat.
OMG. This cake was amazing. I’ve never heard of putting pineapple in a carrot cake but it definitely made a difference.
My variants – i couldn’t find crushed pineapple so used pineapple pieces and just manually crushed them (started by cutting and eventually got impatient and squashed them by hand)
I also used 1 cup of xylitol icing sugar instead of 4 cups normal icing sugar in the cream cheese frosting. It was sweet enough with just that!
Amazing recipe – exactly right for my brother’s 30th birthday! It was a huge hit and we had enough leftovers for easter lunch.
What a yummy, moist, excellent carrot cake! That one’s a keeper and straight into my family recipe book! Thank you so much I have been hunting for a good recipe and now have it 😀😀
Hi Nagi,
Can this recipe be reviewed? there’s a mix of metric and US measurements in the stir ins. How much is 2 cups of carrots in metric? Google is saying 400g but your video looks much less. I’m now at 5x small carrots and only 300g
thank you!
Best Carrot cake we have ever made. We have been using pineapple in our carrot cake for a long time, but only in a 6 oz tin. We thought it would be too moist but it was perfect.
Lovely cake but…….How could you use American Dole pineapple Nagi!!! What’s wrong with Aussie Golden Circle?
Will be making this for my son’s 21st birthday party – carrot & walnut cake is his absolute favorite – one large cake for cutting and cupcakes to cater for everyone. Love the addition of pineapple 😉
My cake didn’t rise properly and as I know every recipetineats recipe I have tried is fail-proof, I knew that the error must have been something I did wrong. Sure enough, I realised I used baking powder instead of bicarb. This does make a big difference – and yes Nagi does specify this in capital letters but I still overlooked this! Lucky the cake still tasted fantastic but yeah remember to use Bicarb not Baking Powder!
I made this cake for a birthday celebration. It was a true crowd pleaser. Super moist and delicious. I’m a passionate baker and studying I knew it would be a winning recipe.
This is a Fabulous cake, everyone loved it, not to sweet, I added a frozen banana as I didn’t have enough pineapple, it worked well, thank you so much, I have just found your site.
This is hands down the best carrot cake recipe ! It’s super easy and better than any shop/cafe bought cake.
I cooked this for my son’s birthday and all the family judged it the best cake I’ve ever made! I sprinkled a mix of chopped walnuts, dried apricots and pepitas on top which gave it a nice finish.
Can I make this into cupcakes?
I’ve used Nagi’s recipe for the Carrot Cake Cupcakes and they were excellent https://discountspot.info/carrot-cake-cupcakes/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
There is a link in the information at the start which you can go into for cupcakes
Made this for my mother-in-laws 70th. Made a double batch. Had so many compliments it became embarrassing- forwarded the recipe on to a few. Wish I could attach a photo to show you how it turned out.
I am not an experienced baker, just a cake now and again, with many failures along the way. I made this for the Board Chair’s 50th, for the volunteers at Foodshare to sing him happy birthday. I’ve never had so many compliments on a cake. Several people went out of their way to tell me how good it was! Thanks.
Made this cake for family birthday and it was delicious! I have been asked to make it again this week, even the grandkids loved it! Winner!
How do I make the icing without a beater? Will a whisk work?
So tasty! This recipe turned out great on my first try. Will definitely be making it again. I didn’t have enough cream cheese so just made half the icing and found it to be just right. I just put it between and on top and added some walnuts for decoration.
This is the only recipe my mom just loves. I made it for her 93rd birthday, 94th and 95th. If I’m out of pineapple I’ll add a grated apple. I also add half a teaspoon of ground cardamom. Together with the cinnamon, the cake comes out just wonderful.
Thank you so very much. My Mom is of Japanese ethnicity, born in the US.
Delicious and pretty easy to make. It was a hit the first time I made it, and my father requested it for his birthday cake so I’ve just made another!