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Carrot Cake with Brown Sugar Cream Cheese Frosting

Classic Carrot Cake with a a twist on Classic Cream Cheese Frosting
Cook Time55 minutes
Course: Dessert
Cuisine: American
Keyword: carrot cake, cream cheese frosting

Equipment

  • bowls
  • 2 8 inch cake pans
  • oven thermometer
  • spatula
  • whisk
  • stand mixer for buttercream

Ingredients

Carrot Cake layers

  • 100 g well chopped pecans
  • 300 g all purpose flour
  • 120 g sugar
  • 300 g brown sugar
  • 1 tsp salt 5 g
  • 1 TBS baking powder 14 g
  • 1 tsp cinnamon 2.6 g
  • 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice 2.6 g
  • 4 oz carrot puree, baby food 113 g
  • 10 oz crushed pineapple weight taken after draining
  • 4 eggs
  • 160 g oil, like canola or vegetable
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract 5 g
  • 4-5 freshly shredded carrots 195 g

Brown Sugar Cream Cheese Frosting

  • 12 oz softened cream cheese from a block 1.5 blocks
  • 6 oz unsalted butter, softened
  • 1 TBS vanilla extract 13 g
  • 1/2 tsp salt 2.5 g
  • 5 cups powdered sugar 24 oz (plus 1 cup (4.5 oz) more if you like it a little stiffer)
  • 2 cups brown sugar 14 oz

Carrot Cake Crumbles

  • 50 g flour
  • 20 g sugar
  • 20 g brown sugar
  • 25 g oil
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1/8 tsp cinnamon
  • handfull chopped pecans
  • 1 TBS orange sprinkles optional

Instructions

Carrot Cake Layers

  • Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
  • Put all the dry ingredients into a large bowl, big enough to hold all of your batter; pecans, flour, sugar, brown sugar salt, baking powder, cinnamon, and pumpkin pie spice.
  • Beat your eggs in a separate bowl. Then add and combine all the other wet ingredients into the eggs, I like a whisk for this; Carrot puree, crushed pineapple, oil, eggs, vanilla, and shredded carrots.
  • Add the wet mixture to the dry and fold it together until it is combined. Don't over mix.
  • Pour about 28 oz of batter into each pan that has been prepared with baking spray and is lined with parchment. Then cover the pans with foil, this helps the cakes bake more evenly.
  • Bake until done, mine took about 55 minutes. The cake is done when it starts to pull away from the sides of the pan and a toothpick inserted to the center comes out clean.
  • Allow the cakes to cool completely then remove then from their pans carefully.
  • To make decorating easier, wrap the cakes in plastic wrap and freeze, I prefer to decorate from frozen.

Brown Sugar Cream Cheese Frosting

  • Fit your mixer with a paddle attachment. Add the brown sugar, softened cream cheese, and softened butter. Turn the mixer to medium high, let it combine until lighter in color, about 5 minutes.
  • Add the confection sugar 1 cup at a time and combine. I added about 5, but if you don't want it as soft add another cup.
  • Add the vanilla and salt, let it combine thoughly.

Carrot Cake Crumbles

  • Preheat oven to 320 degrees.
  • Add all the ingredients into a bowl and combine.
  • The ideal texture for the crumbles is when the mixture will stay in clumps when you squeeze it together.
  • On a baking tray, clump together the mixture using your hands. You want lots of little clumps.
  • Bake for about 15 minutes.

Cake assembly

  • On a cake board, put a small dollop of buttercream and put the cake top side down on the board.
  • Smooth buttercream on the top.
  • Add the second cake layer and seal the sides. Coat the whole cake in a thin layer of buttercream to lock in any crumbs. Refrigerate that for about 15 minutes before your final coat of buttercream. You want to refrigerate it until the frosting is more firm, however long that is.
  • Add your final layer of buttercream, smooth and decorate it as you wish. An easy swirl design is great because cream cheese frosting is notoriously hard to smooth, and can then be topped with crumbles and some more sprinkles if desired.