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The perfect carrot cake

Ah, what a classic! Carrot cake is one of the most popular cakes amongst all my friends, and I totally get it: a moist sponge packed with cinnamon and walnuts for a bit of texture, paired with a heavenly cream cheese frosting. I mean, what’s not to love about this? I’ve been making this cake for well over a decade and you will have seen it in a cupcake version in my previous books. The recipe remains unchanged, as it’s really the most damn perfect carrot cake in my world!

This is a recipe from my book ‘Baking with Anne‘, you can buy it here.

Find more yummy baking recipes here in my recipe archive.

This recipe was filmed for RTL Gusto and aired in March 2024.

Ingredients

Makes 1 cake of 20cm – Prep: 30 min – Oven: 30 min – Fridge: 1 ½h

For the cake:
200g carrots
50g walnuts
75g tinned pineapple
2 eggs
200g brown sugar
150ml sunﬂower oil
200g ﬂour
40g desiccated coconut
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt

For the frosting:
90g butter, room temperature
150g icing sugar
235g cream cheese

Also needed:
3 carrots with greens

Method

Preheat oven to 160°C fan.

Line 2 round 20cm cake tins with baking paper.

Wash the carrots and grate them with the skin on. Finely chop the walnuts and the pineapple.

In a large bowl, cream the eggs and the sugar until pale and ﬂuffy. Keep the whisk on at high speed, and add the oil in a steady stream.

In a separate bowl, mix the ﬂour, coconut, cinnamon, baking powder and salt, then fold through the egg mix. Once mixed, gently incorporate the grated carrot, the pineapple and the walnuts.

Divide the cake batter between the two cake tins and bake for 30 minutes. Turn the cakes onto a wire rack and leave to cool.

Prepare the frosting: In a bowl, cream the butter and the icing sugar together for a few minutes until completely smooth. Add the cream cheese and mix until smooth. Put in the fridge for 30 minutes to set.

Once the cakes are cool, put one cake disc on a serving plate and spread the top with half the frosting. Place the second cake disc on top and spread the remaining frosting over the top. Trim the greens of the remaining three carrots, and cut off the bottoms at varying heights. Stick a toothpick into the bottom of each carrot, then stick them into the cake. Decorate with rinsed carrot greens.
Refrigerate the cake for another hour before serving.