Brown Sugar Carrot Cake With Walnuts

This carrot cake is a wonderful cake that has a hint of brown sugar and warm spices. It pairs well with a homemade or store-bought cream cheese frosting, but is also delicious plain or sprinkled with a little powdered sugar.

Carrot cakes are a great choice for a birthday or other celebration. And, for those who love carrot cake a lot, like my husband does, nothing beats a homemade version.

It’s way better than most of the carrot cakes you will find at the store.

You can use any kind of carrots for this recipe. I had previously purchased a huge bag of large carrots at Sam’s Club to eat in salads, and I had a bunch leftover.

What better use than in a fresh, tasty carrot cake?

This recipe will make a 9″ x 13″ pan of carrot cake, big enough for a large family. We eat this cake as a birthday cake and always have leftovers for the next day.

What ingredients do you need to make carrot cake?

The basic ingredient for a good carrot cake is carrots, flour, oil, spices, and eggs. As long as you have all of those ingredients, you can make a wonderful carrot cake.

The ingredients that you will need to make this Brown Sugar Carrot Cake with Walnuts include all of the following ingredients:

• Eggs
• Canola oil (any vegetable oil can be substituted)
• brown sugar (light or dark is fine)
• vanilla
• baking powder
• baking soda
• cinnamon
• cloves
• nutmeg
• salt
• flour
• grated carrots
• chopped walnuts (pecans can be substituted if you prefer)

A lot of people wonder if butter wouldn’t make a better carrot cake. I am a lover of butter, too, but for carrot cake we must use oil to get a moist cake.

How to make carrot cake

Let’s walk through the steps of how to make the delicious carrot cake that is featured in this recipe. Before you begin, preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Grate the carrots

The first step is to grate your carrots. For this recipe, we used a handheld grater that you might use for something like cheese – just be careful to watch your fingers.

I had a pan underneath so that we could catch all of the grated carrots. Then, I put them into the measuring cup.

If you have a food processor or other tool that you prefer to use for grating your carrots, definitely use it. The most important thing when you are cooking is to be comfortable with your tools.

Chop the walnuts

If you have walnut halves, you should take this opportunity to chop them into smaller pieces. You can also buy walnuts that are already chopped into smaller pieces, if you want to save this step.

Grease and flour your baking pan

Grease your pan with shortening or butter, and then coat it with a thin layer of flour. I use butter to grease my baking pans most of the time.

To flour your pan, put a couple of tablespoons of flour into your greased pan. Then, tilt the pan from side to side, gently tapping the bottom of the pan on each side to get the flour to evenly coat all sides of the pan.

Mix eggs, sugar, oil, and vanilla

This step requires you to mix the eggs, sugar, oil and vanilla together in a mixing bowl that is large enough to hold all of your cake batter. You can mix it with a spoon, a whisk, or use an electric mixer for a fluffier carrot cake.

Add flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and spices to bowl

Now, add all of the rest of the ingredients, except for the carrots and the nuts, to your batter. Mix until well combined, but don’t mix too much.

If you over-mix cake, the result could be gummy and dense.

Gently fold in carrots and walnuts

Now, add the grated carrots and walnuts to your batter. Fold these ingredients in until they are pretty evenly distributed, but make sure that you don’t mix any more than necessary.

Pour cake batter into baking pan and spread evenly

Pour the batter into your baking pan and spread it out evenly with a spatula. Make sure not to touch the bottom or sides of the pan with your spatula.

Bake for about 45 minutes

Bake your carrot cake for about 45 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. It is very important to check to make sure that your cake is done by inserting a thin knife (such as a butter knife) into the middle of the cake to see if it comes out clean.

If any batter is on your knife, your cake should cook for 3-5 more minutes. Check the cake again by inserting a knife in a different center spot to see if it comes out clean.

The reason that cooking time varies slightly even when everyone uses the same recipe is because we are all using a different oven, and we al live at slightly different elevations, among other reasons.

Once your cake is done, remove it from the oven and allow it to cook in a safe place for about 5-10 minutes. Then, transfer it to a cooling rack to allow it to completely cool.

The cake should be completely cooled before you add frosting because the icing will melt or run off if you add it to a warm cake. The last time I made this cake, I baked it the night before and allowed it to cool off before I wrapped it and put it in the refrigerator.

The next day, we frosted it using a homemade cream cheese frosting. Yummy!

What is carrot cake icing made of?

Carrot cake is usually served with cream cheese icing, also known as cream cheese frosting. It has been popular to frost carrot cake with cream cheese frosting since the 1970’s when carrot cake became popular as a “healthy” choice for dessert.

Of course, we now understand that just because it has carrots in it does not mean that it is a health food. The cream cheese frosting, while delicious, is a treat that we should only have on special occasions.

Some people even like to add chopped nuts, such as walnuts, as decoration to the top of frosted carrot cake.

Even though carrot cake with cream cheese frosting is a relatively new idea, carrot cake has been popular for hundreds of years. That shouldn’t surprise us – carrot cake is delicious!

Conclusion

I hope you get the chance to try out this recipe! If you made this, let me know in the discussion below.

Thanks for reading the Salty Skillet today!