Carrot Cake with Brown Butter Cream Cheese Frosting

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If you thought carrot cake with cream cheese frosting was good, just wait until you try this recipe! It’s my favorite carrot cake that’s deeply moist, perfectly spiced, and taken to the NEXT LEVEL with brown butter cream cheese frosting. The rich, nutty notes of the brown butter really enhance the cozy spices in this cake while giving it that classic tang of cream cheese frosting. It’s one of those cakes where people will stop mid-bite to ask what makes it so good! 

Extra Moist, Perfectly Spiced Carrot Cake

Each bite of this carrot cake is beautifully moist, warmly spiced, and completely irresistible. Most of the flavor comes from brown sugar, fresh grated carrots, and four warming spices – cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves. I love that this carrot cake gets even better with time – making it a day or two ahead yields an even more moist and flavorful cake! Here are the key ingredients that make it so moist: 

• Brown sugar. Not only does this sweeten the cake perfectly and add a great depth of flavor, brown sugar contains molasses which does a great job of moistening the crumb. 
• Vegetable oil. I like to use plain vegetable oil, but you can use any kind of oil that you’re used to baking with (canola, avocado, olive, etc) as an alternative. The oil makes the cake super moist and helps maintain that moisture days after baking. 
• Eggs. There are four large eggs in this recipe. In addition to adding moisture, they help bind all of these ingredients together and create a uniform texture while also helping the cake rise.
• Unsweetened Applesauce. This really boosts the moisture and helps create a really tender crumb. The pectin in applesauce also acts as a binding ingredient. You’ll want to make sure you use unsweetened applesauce since we’re already adding sugar to sweeten this cake. 
• Grated Carrots. You’ll need about four large carrots for this recipe, peeled and grated. I always grate my carrots by hand using the small-hole side of a box grater. This yields the perfect carrot shreds that blend into the batter well and bake into a beautiful crumb. You’ll also notice that the grated carrot contains some juice (aka even more moisture) – add it all to the cake!

Carrot Cake Add-In Ideas 

While I love carrot cake without any add-ins, some people enjoy loading up their carrot cake batter with things like raisins, nuts, or shredded coconut. If you are one of those people, here are some extras you can fold in with the carrots at the end of this recipe:

• 1 Cup (145g) raisins
• ½ Cup (39g) shredded coconut
• Up to 2 Cups (218g) toasted pecans 

You can feel free to combine these add-ins, but be sure not to exceed 2 Cups worth of extra ingredients. 

Heavenly Brown Butter Cream Cheese Frosting

The brown butter cream cheese frosting adds a beautiful complexity to this cake. The rich, nutty caramel notes of the brown butter combined with the tang of the cream cheese just take things to a whole new level. It’s essentially a classic cream cheese frosting recipe, but instead of adding softened butter, you first brown the butter in a skillet and let it cool to room temperature before adding it in. If you’ve never browned butter before, don’t worry! I promise it’s easy if you read through the recipe first and follow the time guides. 

After making the brown butter cream cheese frosting, we’ll use it to fill and frost the carrot cake. If you’ve worked with cream cheese frosting before, you may know it to be a little softer than your average frosting, but over the years I’ve figured out ways to make it extra stable for cake decorating – even piping! Here are a few best practices:

• Use full-fat brick-style cream cheese. It’s critical that you don’t use low-fat or spreadable cream cheese, as these variations contain way more water than the full-fat brick kind. That means your frosting will be extra soft, liquidy, and impossible to decorate with. I always use the Philadelphia brand, but feel free to experiment with other brands as long as they meet the general requirements. 
• Use refrigeration. If you find that your kitchen environment is humid or the frosting is still a bit soft, pop it in the refrigerator for 10-15 minutes, then re-mix it on low in your stand mixer. The butter in the recipe will solidify a little bit in the refrigerator, so the overall buttercream will feel a bit thicker and easier to work with afterwards.
• Add stabilizers if necessary. The powdered sugar in this recipe not only sweetens the frosting, it thickens it as well. I use the minimum amount of powdered sugar in this recipe to keep the sweetness down yet keep the stability. But to make it extra stable, I sometimes add a little buttermilk powder, cornstarch (aka corn flour), or meringue powder for more structure. The buttermilk powder adds a little more tang to the cream cheese frosting, but you won’t be able to taste the cornstarch or meringue powder.

How to Make Carrot Cake with Brown Butter Frosting

Step 1. Grate the Carrots. Use the small side of your box grater to grate the carrots by hand. I find it best to have a kitchen scale for this part so you can accurately weigh the grated carrot. 

Step 2. Make the Carrot Cake. Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl, then use a separate medium bowl to whisk together the sugars and wet ingredients. Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients before folding in the grated carrot. 

Divide the batter evenly between greased and lined cake pans and bake at 350ºF (177ºC) for 35-40 minutes. Cool the cake layers in the pan for about 5 minutes before releasing and allowing to cool on a wire rack until room temperature.

Step 3. Brown the Butter. While the carrot cake layers are cooling, make the brown butter. Slice the butter into tablespoon-sized pieces and add it into a large frying pan. Cook over medium heat until the butter melts, then continue cooking and stirring constantly for another 5-7 minutes. During this time it will foam on top, then turn light brown in color with brown speckles and smell deliciously nutty. Remove from heat at this point and transfer to a glass container. 

Place the brown butter in the refrigerator for 1-2 hours, until it’s solidified but soft. You should be able to easily press a finger into it. 

Step 4. Make the Brown Butter Cream Cheese Frosting. When the brown butter has solidified, make the brown butter cream cheese frosting. Beat together the brown butter and cream cheese, add in powdered sugar, vanilla, and salt, then continue mixing until uniform.

Step 5. Make the Candied Pecans (Optional). I chose to garnish this cake with candied pecans. If you want to add these as well, you’ll combine brown sugar, spices, and water in a medium saucepan and cook until they start bubbling. Then, add chopped pecans to coat in the liquid, transfer to a parchment lined baking sheet, and allow to cool for about 10 minutes. 

Step 6. Fill, Frost, and Decorate! Once the brown butter cream cheese frosting is made, use it to fill and stack, and frost the cake layers. You can decorate it any way you want, but to create the look pictured, I frosted a rustic buttercream finish, added some candied pecans as a border around the bottom, piped swirls on top with Wilton Tip 1M, and garnished with more candied pecan pieces. 

Carrot Cake Recipe Video

Here’s a quick video of the process for making this carrot cake recipe so you can watch every step:

If you love recipe videos like this one, be sure to check out my YouTube channel! I’ve got a growing collection of cake recipes, decorating tutorials, and Cake Basics over there. Hit the subscribe button on my page so you never miss a new video.

Similar Cake Recipes You’ll Love

If you love this carrot cake with brown butter frosting, here are some more recipes from my blog to add to your baking list: 

• Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting 
• Spice Cake with Brown Butter Cream Cheese Frosting
• Peach Crisp Cake with Brown Butter Frosting
• Pumpkin Chocolate Marble Cake with Brown Butter Frosting
• Banana Cake with Brown Butter Frosting and Salted Caramel

I hope you love this carrot cake as much as I do! Let me know if you make it in the comments below (be sure to leave a star rating!) and feel free to tag @sugarandsparrowco on Instagram to show me if you post a photo. I love to see what you create with my recipes!