Carrot Cake with Creamy Cream Cheese Frosting

 

Ah yes, vegetables in cake, haha.  A contradiction to me and not typically my jam per se but this Carrot Cake with Creamy Cream  Cheese Frosting?  I'll make that exception.  It is really good.  Like really really good.

Like, "I've had other carrot cakes but man, they're not Becky's Carrot Cake," ringing endorsement.

I've been baking this little ditty weekly for several months now for Dolce Hibachi which is my awesome neighbor's food business so I have thorough experience with this one.

As such, I've come to tweak it with precision.  And you get to reap the benefits.  It's perfect.

I was having trouble with this one for a variety of reasons, namely that damn useless oven but also the original called for much too much fat.

Greasy, leaden outcomes and reliably sank in the center every single dang time.

.....Ok, sorry, I'm not going to be able to help myself here so pardon a bit of an online recipe rant which is precipitated further by a recipe I saw on TikTok the other day.  No, not gonna link that one, sorry, not unless I straighten that recipe out.

Look.  

Recipes online.  

Ok?

It's a well-known fact that a too-large portion of them are a. poorly written; b. posted for pretty pictures that bring people to sites so those folks can earn ad income; c. obviously not tested thoroughly; and d. incorrect.

Personally, and I'm gonna just go out on that limb and say it:  that's unprofessional.  And rude.  Especially if you claim to be a professional, that's even worse.  Like c'mon, sheesh.

The issue?  People at home attempting to make the recipe waste time, waste ingredients thereby waste money, one's confidence is shaken, it turns people off of baking, and is needlessly infuriating.

Hence, ultimately, why I write this blog and share the recipes that I do.  They're all tested winners with reliable, predictable results, with readily available ingredients, and pans most will have on hand or can procure easily for not a lot of dough.  Ah, baking pun.

So it grinds my gears when people are so careless and so willing to toss things on the internet knowing they're setting folks up for failure.  Or be cute or coyly baiting with their half-info.  Or to run their crap recipes just for ad revenue.

And for sure, it's a well-known fact that recipes on TikTok can be iffy at best but it's confounding as to why folks don't make an effort to change that.  Wouldn't you have more success if you did people right?  If you're not gonna do it right, don't share it at all.  Yeah I said it.

I spent too many hours thinking about ways to remedy that TikTok recipe and being overly agitated.  Even baked it in a different type of pan (it was a very specific, very hard to find pan in the video) (recipe sucked btw),  Don't mess with my soul, heh.

Case in point to a degree initially with this Carrot Cake with Creamy Cream Cheese Frosting.  I knew this recipe was indeed on the right track but a myriad of fails kept me on the prowl to get it right.

And get it right I did.

It's a combination of two recipes really, the cake and the frosting.  Don't be afraid to mix and match, by the way.

Let's dig in, shall we?

A note about the carrots.  Shred them yourself.  I know.  It seems a hassle when you can just buy a pre-shredded bag.  Those are all dried out and limp.  You can use them, yes, but they're not optimal.

Just zip a few whole suckers through a food processor* and you're good to go.  Or a hand grater,* that works too.

From there, honestly, it could not be any easier.
 

Dump all the dry ingredients in your mixer* bowl, yep, all of them and whirl that around in the bowl.  Truthfully, you really don't even need a mixer for this Carrot Cake; it's easily done by hand.  The frosting?  Yeah, a mixer helps.

Stir together your melted butter and oil while the mixer is doin' its thing mixing up the dry.

Dry ready to go.

Once the dry looks good and well blended, spill in your butter-oil and stir that around until it starts to look like wet-ish sand.

Add your eggs, one by one.  Easy peasy.

This is the texture post- butter and oil, and before eggs.

Toss in your vanilla, give it a few spins around the bowl, then dump in your carrot shreds.  Along with the nuts and raisins if you're using those which, full disclosure, I have not tested the recipe with nuts and raisins.  I bet it's delish though.

Give the whole thing a mix for a few moments and tada, Carrot Cake batter!  Divide that up evenly in your cake pans* and off to the oven it goes.

Let's bake!

Of course the one and only time I take photos, the cakes dome a bit.  Typically they're quite evenly level across the whole surface and look more moist than this.

To make the frosting, toss the cream cheese into the mixer bowl, cold is good, no need to room temp it.  Add in the corn starch and let the machine whip that up.

Yes, got me a new kitchen scale* as my previous one kicked the bucket, at a most inopportune time of course.

Scoop in your powdered sugar and whip that up until it's looking like a nice, smooth frosting.

Lastly, drizzle in the heavy cream and give that a nice whip for about a minute.

Ok!  Assembly time.

Pulling this all together, place one cake round on a nice serving plate* and scoop about a cup's worth of frosting onto it.  You can use a spatula* or a knife or whatever works for you, your hand (that's different but you do you, boo) but I find an offset spatula* works best for me.

Personally, I'm not a fan of a big thick layer of frosting encasing the sides so I do a barely-there coating on them and save the rest for a thick, lovely, swirly top.  

Thick layer in the middle, thick layer on top, enough on the sides to keep it from drying out.  That way, each bite is a balance of cake to frosting.  See?  Logic.  I'm big on balance.

Yeah, need to work on my cutting skills.

Keep this bad boy in the fridge and either slice and let the slices lose their chill or remove the cake from the fridge for a bit before serving this up.

And there we have it, friends, Carrot Cake with Creamy Cream Cheese Frosting!  Great for spring, the holidays, or seriously, whenever you darn well please.  Weekly if you'd like.

*The food processors, hand graters, mixers, serving plates, spatulas, baking pans, offset spatulas, and Oxo Good Grips kitchen scale are Amazon affiliate links.  Happy baking, thanks!  Please see the "info" tab for more, well, info.