What size and type of pans should you use for a carrot cake? I prefer walnuts as décor for the cake, but you can decorate it however you like. The flavour is incredible, and they add a lovely crunch. Make sure you toast these before as this is a game-changer. I tested recipes with walnuts and pecans and prefer pecans. Either way, make sure you grate the carrots yourself vs buying grated carrots which will be too dry. I liked this but found it made the cake quite heavy as you need quite a bit more carrot, so I did one cup finely grated and one cup coarsely grated. Two cups of grated carrots was the norm, but Jenny suggested grating it on the fine side of the grater. I used 3 teaspoons of mixed spice but upped the cinnamon and ground ginger slightly. Ina uses 3 teaspoons of mixed spice and Sally uses cinnamon, ground ginger, nutmeg, and cloves to the total value of 3 teaspoons.
Three teaspoons of spice seemed to be the common amount.
There were a few minor tweaks to some of the other ingredients and I worked with what I thought was best. My recipe includes all metric measurements as well as cups, but with baking, you should be using weighted measurements as this is the only accurate way to bake. I also used 1 cup of dark brown sugar instead of all white which gives it flavour, colour, and moisture. The amount of sugar varied from 1 ½ cups to 2 and in the end, I opted for 1 ½ cups because I don’t like aggressively sweet cake. If for some reason you dislike raisins, you can leave them out. I also added raisins because I love them so much plus, I developed this recipe for my client Raisins of South Africa. I really love pineapple in a carrot cake, so this had to be in the mix. Most South African recipes included crushed pineapple, and the American recipes often had apple sauce. I had tested out Jenny Morris’s recipe which also had similar ratios, so I knew this was the right direction. Both their recipes were very similar and in line with the common formula, I referred to. Quite a few people voted for I na Paarman’s (from her cookbook ‘ Cook with Ina Paarman’), and Sally’s Baking Addiction. In the end, I eliminated all the recipes that had coconut in them as I dislike desiccated coconut with a passion unless used when used in my grandmother’s crunchie recipe(it’s the best version you will ever find trust me). A few were total outliers and sounded very interesting too. About 80% of the recipes were all very similar and had a common formula thread running through them. I looked at every single screenshot or link I was sent and immediately discovered a trend. I put a request out on Instagram a few weeks ago, looking for people’s best carrot cake recipes and got an overwhelming response. With this recipe, I did extensive research trying to uncover the best carrot cake recipe and I’m going to explain to you all about that. It turns out to be very similar in terms of the basic ratios but uses pineapple and banana instead of carrot and pineapple. I had always adapted my Hummingbird cake into a carrot cake. I have never posted a carrot cake here in all the years so it’s about time. Today is a special day because it’s my blog’s 14th birthday and I feel like marking the occasion with cake. The cream cheese frosting is perfect for me and there is enough to ice a 2 layer cake generously.
It has a decent weight whilst still being fluffy with a moist and tender crumb. It’s a big claim to say something is the best carrot cake but at least this is MY best carrot cake recipe. I have spent a lot of time researching and testing the best carrot cake recipe recently and I think I have settled on one.