The Best Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Every time I hear “carrot cake” it reminds me of this old joke where the rabbit goes into the woodland’s patisserie (I know, right?), and asks if they have a carrot cake. Of course, they don’t have any and the rabbit goes out. On the next day, the rabbit comes again and asks again, but they don’t have any since they don’t offer it at all and it’s not on the menu, so the rabbit goes away. The same thing repeats a few times, the baker gets annoyed and tells the rabbit that if it comes asking for a carrot cake again, he will nail down his ears. On the next day the rabbit comes again and asks: “Do you have nails?”. Surprised, the baker replies: “We don’t have any nails, this is a patisserie.” Relieved, the rabbit says “Then I’ll have a carrot cake.”

When I was little, I thought this joke was very funny and I didn’t know there was such thing as a carrot cake. How could there be? Carrots are vegetables and they aren’t sweet, how could you make a dessert out of it?

So one day, we were driving back home from our holiday at the Black Sea, and we stopped for lunch in the little town of Hissarya. And what did I see in the menu? A carrot cake! I ordered straight away and it turned out incredibly delicious. Since that day the carrot cake stopped being something fictional in my mind, but rather real. We have made quite a few carrot cakes but wanted to make it look more “festive” so we baked 3 layers and made a pineapple cream cheese frosting. It is super yummy, and everyone will like it. You don’t need a special occasion to make it, although if you need one – Easter would be the time to do it.

Carrot Cake Ingredients:

• 300 g grated carrots

Dry Ingredients:

• 250 g all purpose flour
• 150 g sugar
• 70 g walnuts
• 2 tsp. soda
• 1 ½ tsp. baking powder
• 1 tbsp. cinnamon
• ½ tsp. salt
• ¼ tsp. nutmeg

Wet Ingredients:

• 4 large eggs
• 125 g yogurt
• 120 ml sunflower oil
• 100 g pineapple
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract

Ingredients for the  cream cheese frosting and carrot decoration:

• 450 g cream cheese
• 100 g butter, softened
• 100 g icing sugar
• 40 g yogurt
• 100 g pineapple jam
• 70 g orange fondant
• 30-40 g green fondant
• Black edible marker

Carrot Cake Preparation:

1. Use a garlic press to press the pineapple. Place it into a small sieve over a bowl and leave it to drain. If you don’t have a garlic press, you can just cut the pineapple into tiny pieces and leave it to drain from the juice.
2. Preheat the oven to 160°C. Line 3 round trays (20 cm diameter) with parchment paper and grease them.
3. In a big bowl, mix all dry ingredients together. In another bowl, whisk the eggs, then add the remaining wet ingredients, including the drained pineapple, and mix well.
4. Add the wet ingredients to the flour mixture, stir, then add the grated carrots and stir again.
5. Divide the mixture equally into the round trays and bake for about 45 minutes. Insert a wooden skewer into the centre of the cake to check if it is done, it should come out dry.
6. Leave the cake layers to cool in the trays for about 10 minutes, then invert them onto cooling racks until completely cool.

Cream Cheese Frosting Preparation:

1. In a big bowl, mix together the cream cheese and butter. Mix in the yogurt and salt.
2. Gradually add in the sugar. Then add the pineapple jam and mix until a thick frosting is formed.
3. If you would like to colour the cream cheese frosting green so it can look like grass, now it’s the moment to add the the green food colour. Mix until the colour is distributed equally. If you would like, you can divide the cream cheese frosting into 2 equal parts and colour only half of it – the half that you’re going to use to frost the top and the sides of the carrot cake.

Assembling the carrot cake:

1. Place the first cake layer onto a cake stand or serving plate. Using a spoon, transfer about ¼ of the frosting and spread it.
2. Place the second cake layer i spread 1/4 of the frosting. If you think that your layers are going to start moving about, you can fixate them with 2 toothpicks.
3. Top the cake with the last layer and use the remaining frosting to cover it from all sides.
4. Using a food processor, crush the walnuts and decorate the outer edge of your carrot cake.
5. Cool in the fridge for at least half an hour.
6. Meanwhile, shape a few fondant carrots. We made 3 different in size carrots and used black edible marker to draw a few realistically looking dashes. It’s not necessary to make whole carrots, you can just shape the upper part so it will look like they’re coming out of the soil/ground. Make the bottom flat so they can sit stable. Shape green leaves and attach them to the carrots. You can make small holes in the centre of the carrots and lightly brush the stems of the leaves so they will stick. Place the fondant carrots in the centre of the carrot cake or wherever you think they will look best.
7. Stored in a fridge, the carrot cake can last up to 4 days.