Irresistibly moist and secretly healthy carrot cake… This recipe is so good, you’re going to want to eat it again for breakfast the next morning!
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I am the girl who eats carrot cake all year.
If you haven’t tried my recipe yet for Healthy Carrot Cake Cupcakes, that post continues to be one of the most popular recipes on my blog…
So I guess I’m not the only one who eats carrot cake year-round!
Since the carrot cake cupcakes have been so popular, I knew I wanted to get an actual healthy carrot cake recipe up on the blog this year.
With Easter less than a week away, today seems like the perfect time to share this moist and incredibly delicious healthy carrot cake, loaded with sweet cinnamon and carrots.
I hope you love this recipe as much as I do!
The carrot cake above is topped with my Cream Cheese Greek Yogurt Frosting – which I even successfully made vegan!
It also tastes amazing topped with melted coconut butter (one of my favorite ways to eat carrot cake), or the cake is so perfectly spiced and flavorful that you might want to simply eat it unfrosted.
Above – watch me make the healthy carrot cake
The recipe was adapted from my Vegan Carrot Cake.
Healthy Carrot Cake
Ingredients
- 1 packed cup shredded carrot (200g)
- 1/2 cup applesauce (120g)
- 1/3 cup oil, or sub applesauce only if you don’t mind a gummy texture (60g)
- 2 tsp white or apple cider vinegar
- 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 cups spelt, white, or Bob’s gf flour (180g)
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/3 cup sugar, xylitol, or evaporated cane juice (65g)
- 1/16 tsp uncut stevia OR 2 additional tbsp sugar
- optional shredded coconut or chopped walnuts
- optional 1/2 cup raisins
Instructions
- *For a double layer cake, simply double all ingredients and bake in two pans.Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease and line an 8-inch square or round pan with parchment. In a mixing bowl, whisk together the first 5 ingredients and let sit at least 10 minutes or fridge overnight. In a separate bowl, stir together all remaining ingredients. Pour wet into dry, then stir until just combined. Do not overmix. Pour into the prepared pan, and smooth down evenly. Bake 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean. The carrot cake tastes much sweeter and better-textured the day after it’s made, and leftovers can be refrigerated for 3-4 days or even sliced and frozen. I frosted the cake with about 1/2 cup of the frosting recipe linked under the second photo in this post – If using a preservative-free frosting like the one I used, it’s best to frost directly before serving.View Nutrition Facts
Video
Notes
More Easter Recipes:
This looks and sounds divine, yum!
xx Kelly
Sparkles and Shoes
This look delicious! Can just imagine this along with my 3 a clock coffee, yummi! Thank you for sharing.
12 pieces in an 8×8 pan? Those are awfully small pieces of cake!
It’s actually bigger than you might think, especially once frosted. For example, the cake in these photos is an 8×8 pan cut into 16 squares, so 12 would be even bigger than this: https://lett-trim.today/2015/07/20/zucchini-cake-recipe/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Made it after dinner, and just had the first pieces. Very good! I added 1/4 cup shredded coconut, which seemed about right.
So I’m looking at the cupcake recipe you reference, and I notice that the ingredients are exactly the same. Why does the cake recipe have us let the wet ingredients rest together before mixing with dry? Why not do that with the cupcakes? Thanks.
I thought the same thing… anyone have an answer?
Thanks for this recipe!
Though never had a carrot cake before, I took a leap of faith and made this recipe – and its very good!
Didn’t even use sweetener of any kind because the carrots are sweet anough for me.
Oh that looks amazing and incredibly delicious 🙂
Love, Kerstin
http://www.missgetaway.com/
This cake was delicious! Thanks for another great recipe!
Any idea how much white wheat to use? Don’t have any spelt as none of us are GF and the spelt/GF flours are too expensive for someone on a fixed income.
That would be white whole wheat flour (have the wheat already and the mill), not AP flour. Thanks.
The recipe says you can use regular old white flour. Katie is not personally a fan of whole wheat flour because it yields a dense result in cakes that is also somewhat gummy. But you are free to experiment if you don’t mind the risk, and you would use the same amount.
Carrot cake is my favorite dessert. So excited to try this