Cardamom-Spiced Carrot Cake with Whipped Cream-Cheese Frosting Recipe
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Have your cake and eat your veggies too, with this moist, nicely spiced carrot cake. It’s flavorful enough on its own, but topped with Whipped Cream Cheese Frosting it makes for a no-fuss dessert fit for any celebration.
Game plan: Grating 2 pounds of carrots on a box grater can seem like a daunting task. Give your biceps a rest and use the grater attachment on your food processor.
This recipe was featured as part of our Easy-Bake Birthday Cakes story and our Baked Sweets photo gallery.
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 2 teaspoons ground cardamom
- 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/2 teaspoon fine salt
- 4 large eggs, at room temperature
- 2 cups granulated sugar
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 1/3 cup well-shaken low-fat buttermilk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 pounds carrots, grated on the large holes of a box grater (about 6 cups)
- 1 cup walnuts, toasted and finely chopped
- 2 Whipped Cream Cheese Frosting recipes
- Heat the oven to 350°F and arrange the rack in the middle. Coat two 8-inch cake pans with butter and flour, and tap out any excess flour. Set aside.
- Combine flour, baking powder, cardamom, cinnamon, baking soda, ginger, and salt in a large bowl, and whisk to aerate and break up any lumps. Set aside.
- Combine eggs, sugar, oil, buttermilk, and vanilla in a large bowl, and whisk until eggs are broken up and mixture is thoroughly combined. Using a rubber spatula, fold in flour mixture until just combined. Fold in carrots and walnuts until evenly mixed.
- Divide batter evenly between the prepared pans. Bake until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, about 50 to 60 minutes.
- Remove cakes from the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool, about 15 minutes. Run a knife around the perimeter of each, and turn cakes out onto the rack to cool completely.
- To frost, place a cake layer on an 8-inch cardboard round, a tart-pan bottom, or a cake plate. Evenly spread about 1/3 of the frosting over the top of the layer. Stack the second layer, and evenly spread another 1/3 of the frosting over the top and sides of the whole cake. (Don’t worry about looks at this point—this is just a basecoat, a.k.a. a crumb layer, and it will be covered up later.) Place in the refrigerator until frosting is set up and slightly hard, about 15 minutes. Remove from the refrigerator and spread remaining frosting over the top and sides of the cake, ensuring it’s as even as possible. Serve.
Beverage pairing: Dow’s 10 Years Old Tawny Porto, Portugal. Spiced desserts like carrot cake go wonderfully with sweet wines that have some degree of oxidation, such as tawny port, Madeira, and Vin Santo. The nutmeg, cardamon, and cinnamon just seem to fit smoothly with the nut and toffee notes of the wines. This Dow’s port is a great tawny for carrot cake, as it’s one of least sweet versions of this style.
can't wait to try this with the cardamom...
but i'll use roast walnut or hazelnut oil...
it adds nice subtle nutty flavor...mmmmmmmmmm
Just got done mixing one of these up. A couple of points that I would like to bring up are; For the main bowl use at least a 4qt, or you will be up to the tip top, and I found it easy to hand toss the carrots with the dry ingredients before adding the wet. The dry is just enough to coat 6C of carrots, figured doing it this way would ensure no dry lumps in the batter.
I'm making it again tonight with some home-made apple sauce to reduce the oil. Last time it turned out just perfect! We all loved it. Friends of ours are making it, too, now My youngest son kept asking for it for 2 weeks. He loved the spices, especially cardamom.
Thanks
Made this tonight and the whole house smells fantastic. I made the following changes: used raisins instead of nuts (guest coming with an allergy)... and 1.5 cups granulated and 0.5 cup of light brown sugar.
I stole a bit that got half stuck to one pan and if that's any indicator this is a keeper! My only suggestion: the cake released fine from the sides of the pans but wanted to stick to the bottom, next time I'll use buttered parchment rounds like I usually do.
LGourmet, you can substitute 1/4 of the white flour for whole wheat without any noticeable difference. You can also replace all of the oil with 50% unsweetened applesauce and 50% low fat plain yogurt. For a bit of buttery flavour just grease the pans with butter. The sugar can be reduced and substituted with sweetener (prob. Splenda is best). As for icing, instead of covering the cake completely why not drizzle a small zigzag on each slice instead? You can make it with light cream cheese and just enough icing sugar and vanilla to sweeten it.
I can't wait to try this! It's my husband's favorite dessert and he has not been able to have it since we discovered he had diabetes, so we have to be very careful. I will try to adjust the sugar and use homemade applesauce, also to cut down on fat, but having cardamom, cinnamon and ginger is fabulous and I will probably skip the icing.
If anyone has ideas on using whole wheat flour or any other kind, and what it would do to the taste, please let me know.
Cake was delicious, and most importantly, not too sweet. Just make sure you have a *very* large bowl to mix it in (and big enough cake pans)! I found the suggested icing quite underwhelming.
Made this as a standard carrot cake (ie one layer) with the recommended frosting for an important birthday party. Absolutely excellent! I also coloured some marzipan pale orange to make suitable letters for the top.
Will be making this regularly.
I LOVE the cardamom idea-- it's such an underused spice. Yes to fresh ginger, but are you sure that 1 T will be enough?
any changes to turn this recipe into cupcakes?
(4 out of 5 stars) Tasty cake--good use of lots of carrots. I like the cardamon, but might reduce it a bit next time or up the cinn/ginger.
Here are my alterations: Used fresh ginger (TBLS or so); 1/2 cup applesauce, 1/2 cup butter instead of oil; 1 tsp whiskey instead of vanilla (was out); only 1/2 cup walnuts (what I had); for 2 cups of carrot I used the smaller grater holes...might go higher to 4 cups next time. Baked for 70-80 minutes in a springform pan.
Didn't make the frosting (did a simple cream cheese frosting).
This sounds fantastic. A lower fat version could substitute applesauce for 1/2 of the oil
You can use any salt you like; when a recipe specifies kosher salt it's because it measures differently than table salt (it has a different crystal size so there's less of it in a teaspoon), so you know to adjust the salt somewhat if you're using table salt.
Why Kosher salt?