The Ultimate Carrot Cake

The perfect carrot cake filled with warming spices and sweet roasted carrots. Topped with a cream cheese icing and crushed ginger biscuits.

One of my favourite cakes is a carrot cake. The slightly dense but moist texture, filled with spices that remind me of chai, and finished with a sweet cream cheese icing.

It’s hard not to love this cake when it tastes this good. This makes an appearance once a year during the colder months in my house. I bake one chunky, thick carrot cake and lather on the icing.

We all sit with a slice of carrot cake and a big mug of chai and we just love it. It’s comforting and decadent – it reminds us of Christmas every time.

We’re roasting the carrots here

So unlike most carrot cake recipes, I roast my carrots in melted butter and brown sugar. This allows them to caramelise and for their sweetness to intensify.

It also reduces excess moisture in the carrots as the cake itself is moist enough. Excess moisture can cause cakes to collapse or become ‘stodgy’.

Why I bake with flaxseeds/linseeds

My cake recipes usually call for ground flax seeds, or sometimes known as linseeds. I tend to buy the golden variety and I usually purchase mine pre-ground as it saves the hassle of grinding these.

It comes as a fine powder which forms this gelatinous egg-like substance when re-constituted with water. This process can take anywhere from 5-15 minutes, and I use the ratio of 1tbsp ground flax to 2tbsp cold water.

How it helps

They help to bind baked goods by forming polysachharide chains which disperse during baking to form a network. These chains also trap moisture which helps to prevent dry baked goods, they even prevent gluten networks forming so you end up with more tender crumb structures.

BUT, they are not an exact replacement for eggs, and an egg based recipe that calls for 4 eggs will not work by simply substituting 4 flax eggs, and vice versa – it doesn’t work as they are not the same ingredient and behave completely differently.

Flaxseeds are not egg substitutes

Eggs on the other hand are protein based and the protein strands form a network when exposed to heat, allowing for a stronger binding element. They help to build structure which is something that flax eggs can’t do (as it is starch based).

Eggs can trap air between the protein network which is why they foam up and form airy meringues, which flax eggs again can’t do. For a vegan meringue, you would need to use an agent like aquafaba which does behave similarly to egg whites.

When it comes to replacing eggs in a recipe, in most cases you can’t simply rely on one sole egg-replacer but I’ve done all the thinking and testing for you here to make sure you guys end up with a perfect carrot cake.

Could I just substitute eggs into this carrot cake instead of using flaxseeds?

I don’t bake with eggs so I can’t give you a direct yes or no answer. However others have used 1 egg in this recipe in lieu of the flaxseeds and have said it worked perfectly.

If you don’t want to use flax or egg, then leave it out. The recipe still works without flax, but the crumb will be a touch drier.

Wholemeal bread flour? In a carrot cake? Why?

I’m well aware that this goes against all baking teaching, bread flour is meant for bread and not cakes, right? Wrong. It can be useful when used correctly, and the science works, and this recipe works.

The wholemeal bread flour in this percentage will add a subtle nutty flavour as well as helping texturally. It does this by binding everything together due to its higher gluten content. This allows it to develop the moist dense texture that a good carrot cake should have.

If you can’t get hold of this, substitute this for white bread flour. If you can’t get a hold of that, use additional plain flour.

Cream cheese icing

For the cream cheese icing, I prefer mine on the creamier side, almost like a glaze. However if you prefer this on the firmer side, you can achieve this by adding more sugar and refrigerating for longer.

Personally I think this is sweet enough for me and hence I wouldn’t be too keen to add more sugar to the icing. 

Carrot cake cupcakes

This can also be used to make 24 cupcakes which will take around 18-20 minutes to bake at 160’C fan/ 180’C conventional, or until a tooth pick comes out clean.

Layered cakes

This recipe makes 1 thick 8″ layer cake which is how I like to serve this.
This can also be split between 2 trays to make 2 thinner 8″ layered cakes which will take around 40-45mins to bake.

Trust me on this one. It’s incredible.

If you enjoyed this recipe

Please do let me know! Leave a review and a rating below, I’d love to know how you got on.

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Until then, happy cooking!