Today on Sugar Spun Run, I'll be showing
you how to make a carrot cake from scratch.
For the longest time the only
reason I would eat carrot cake was
because I wanted that cream-cheese
frosting on top. Well I'm very proud to
say that after a lot of recipe trial and
error,
I have finally developed a carrot cake
recipe that is so good I will eat it
even without cream cheese frosting
involved. Now, of course for today's
recipe we are going to be covering our
cake with cream cheese frosting, but I'm
so excited to share this super moist,
super flavorful, best-ever, carrot cake
recipe with you. To begin, you're going to
want to pre-heat your oven to 350
degrees Fahrenheit. With your oven
preheated now you'll want to grab a
large mixing bowl. In this mixing bowl,
we're going to combine two and a half
cups of all purpose flour, 1 cup of
granulated sugar, one cup of dark or
light brown sugar, one and a half
teaspoons of baking soda, one teaspoon of
baking powder, one teaspoon of salt, and
then for our spices, we are going to add
two teaspoons of ground cinnamon and
half a teaspoon of nutmeg. With your dry
ingredients combined in the bowl, you're
just going to want to use a spoon to
stir everything together until your dry
ingredients are well combined. We'll add
one cup of canola or vegetable oil and
half a cup or, one stick, of melted butter.
At this point the batter is going to be
a little stiff, so rather than mixing by
hand I like to grab my electric mixer, or
you can use a stand mixer if you have it,
and use this to stir the ingredients
until they're well combined. This recipe
uses 4 eggs and we're going to add them
one at a time into our batter, stirring
until each egg is well combined. With our
eggs combined now we're going to add 1
tablespoon of pure vanilla extract. I
know that sounds like a lot, but it is
going to give this carrot cake such a
good flavor. We'll stir this together and
now come the carrots. This recipe uses 3
cups of grated carrots. For, me this is
usually about 4 large carrots and I
always recommend peeling them before
grating. I'm going to add this into our
batter, and at this point if you want to
add any extras, like raisins
or nuts, I know a lot of people like
walnuts or pecans in their carrot cake,
you can add them here as well. For me, I
like just carrots in mine so that's all
I'm adding, and I'm going to use a
spatula to stir everything together
until it's nicely combined. That's really
all there is to making this carrot cake
batter. It's a really nice and easy
recipe, and that's one of the things I
love most about it. Now that we have our
batter prepared, we're going to need our
cake pans. I like to use two 8-inch cake
pans for this recipe, but if you prefer
you can use nine inch pans instead. I
also always line the bottoms of my pans
with parchment paper, and then generously
grease and flour the sides; that way I
can be sure that my carrot cakes won't
and stick to the pans when they're
finished baking. We will take our carrot
cake batter and evenly divide this into
our prepared pans, and now you'll
transfer our carrot cakes to our 350
degree Fahrenheit preheated oven. These
carrot cakes are going to need to bake
for about 40 minutes in an 8-inch pan,
and you'll need a little less time if
you're using a 9-inch pan, because
they're so moist and dense, they need a
little longer than your average cake
recipe does. The best way to check that
they're done baking, is to take a
toothpick and insert that in the center
of the cake. If it comes out clean or
with a few moist crumbs
you know it's finished. We will let these
carrot cakes cool for about 15 minutes
before running a knife between the edge
of the cake and edge the pan to loosen
them from the pan, and then gently
inverting them onto a cooling rack where
we will let them cool completely. Make
sure that you let your carrot cakes cool
completely before covering them with
frosting. Once our cakes are cool, now we
can decorate them. Of course, I am going
to be decorating my carrot cakes using
cream cheese frosting. If you want the
recipe for this frosting, just head over
to my video library, and you can grab the
recipe there or you can google, "Sugar
Spun Run cream cheese frosting." What
we'll do is I'll transfer my cake to a
serving platter, because this cake is so
moist I usually like to do a crumb
coating around the outside before I
frost it completely. What this means is I
will do a very thin layer and run my
spatula around the outside to catch all
of the crumbs, then I'll transfer the
cake to the fridge or to the freezer for
about 15 to 20 minutes and then continue
frosting. This will keep any crumbs from
getting into my outside layer of
frosting. Now because I like a lot of frosting, I
did use a double batch of my cream
cheese frosting for this recipe, but if
you're a little more conservative with
your icing, you can get away with using a
single batch. All right as you guys can
see I never have been and never will be
a cake decorator, but I am going to top
this carrot cake off with just a little
frosting on top. I have a little more
cream-cheese frosting and I am going to
be using my Wilton 8B tip, and then I'm
just going to top these off with some
finely chopped pecans. Alright, while
the decorating skills are certainly
lacking, this carrot cake is finished and
I'm going to dig in and show you guys
just how beautiful it is on the inside.
That is how you make my all-time
favorite carrot cake recipe. This recipe
is so moist and so full of flavor thanks
to the spices we've added and the melted
butter that we've used, in addition to
the oil. I really think you guys are
going to love this. I really hope you'll
try it out. Please leave me a comment and
let me know what you think. Thank you so
much for watching and I will see you
next time.
