Best Carrot Cake Ever

Carrot Cake with cream cheese frosting is a family favourite. I found the original recipe many years ago in my mother-in-law’s cookbook collection. I’ve made several recipes from this book since the 1980’s but this was the first and has remained one of my go to recipes.

It was easy to follow and didn’t have any complicated techniques. As a beginner baker it was perfect. No Skills required! As my baking abilities improved over the years, the recipe has undergone a bit of tweaking but remains easy to follow and delicious.

Regardless of the cake you want to bake there are a couple tips that will help ensure success.

Read The Recipe:  One of my biggest mistakes was not reading the recipe all the way through before getting started. If it seems complicated move on to a recipe that matches your abilities. Walk before you run!

Preheat the Oven: Most, if not all recipes, call for preheating the oven when baking a cake. Placing the batter in a cold oven will keep the cake from rising properly and will likely be dense instead of having a nice light texture. I turn the oven on as I gather ingredients, so that it’s ready for the batter.

Gather all Ingredients: I’ve learned it’s easy to forget an ingredient especially when I’m tired. For a long time I thought I couldn’t bake at the end of the day, nothing ever turned out. The real problem was solved by gathering everything the recipe called for before starting. Nothing worse than realizing you’re out of an ingredient half way through making the batter!

Move Ingredients Once Used: The other trick that works for me is to put all the ingredients on my right side and once I’ve used it, place it to my left.……just in case I can’t remember if I already added it to the batter. My brain can be kinda wonky at the end of the day!

Prep pans properly: I like to grease the pans with unsalted butter, dust with flour and then cover the bottom of the pans with parchment paper. This ensures the cake will release from the bottom of the cake pans easily. 

Sift the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon together. Sifting the dry ingredients combines them properly before adding to the batter and helps keep the cake nice and light in texture.
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Divide batter equally in between the pans, weigh them if you need to.   Scales aren’t expensive and are well worth the cost when baking. 

Cool 15 minutes in the pan. Remove from pan and take parchment paper off,  Cool completely before frosting. About 1 hour.

Crumb coat: Spread a very thin layer of frosting over the entire cake and refrigerate at least 30 minutes.  It isn’t pretty but this keeps the crumbs out of the top layer of frosting and makes sure the cake stays moist. It’s absolutely worth the 30 minutes. 

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Carrot Cake
Preheat oven to 325°F

Grease, flour & line  with parchment paper 2- 8” pans or 1 -9x13
2 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs, room temperature
1 1/3 cup corn oil
1/2 cup crushed pineapple, drained
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups grated carrots

Instructions

Sift flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt together. Set aside
In the large bowl of an electric mixer beat eggs, vanilla and sugar until well combined and light yellow. 
Add flour mixture and mixing just to combine. Add oil in a steady stream and mix to combine

Add carrots  and pineapple and stir to combine.

Divide evenly into 2 - 8” pans bake in centre of oven for 40-45 minutes or until toothpick inserted into centre comes out clean
Cool in the pans on a wire rack for 15-20 minutes. Remove from pans and cool completely before frosting with cream cheese frosting.