If you have a Carrot Cake fan in your family, they will love you forever if you make this cake! My sister-in-law’s favorite cake is carrot and before she left me and moved to Atlanta, I used to make this for her birthday every year!
Every good layer cake starts with a solid base recipe. I think what makes this Carrot Cake special is the addition of pecans, coconut, and crushed pineapple in the batter. As if that wasn’t enough, I drizzle a warm buttermilk glaze over each layer when it comes out of the oven. Once it seeps in, you get a very moist and dense cake that is loaded with warm spiced flavors.
To me, Carrot Cake screams fall. I know a lot of people make it in the spring for Easter but the warm cinnamon-spice flavor definitely make me think of the Fall season. I definitely got pretty extra with the decoration on this one. I’ll do my best to explain how to do the salted caramel drip and the piping, but this cake is just as good without all of the frills!
As always, I start out all of my layer cakes with a circle of parchment paper in the bottom of the pans, then I spray cooking spray on the interior sides. You can grease and flour your pans if you’d like but this is much easier, less messy, and has never failed me yet.
The most time consuming part of this cake is shredding the carrot. I use a box grater and shred it on the small side to make sure there aren’t huge chunks in the batter.
I mix together the wet ingredients first in a stand mixer with a whisk attachment then I slowly add my dry ingredients. I stir in the pecans, coconut, carrot, and crushed pineapple with a spatula so they stay in tact within the batter.
Don’t taste the batter because you’ll want to just finish it off with a spoon instead of baking it and sharing!
While the cakes are in the oven, you can start making the buttermilk glaze. This glaze is super simple! It’s basically everything bad for you heated over the stove. It looks foamy over heat, but as it cools, it starts to deflate and look more like glaze.
Your cake layers will be a dark brown when they come out of the oven. Make sure there’s no “jiggle” in the middle when you pull them out, otherwise the center won’t be done fully. Pour the glaze over each layer while it’s still in the pan and fresh from the oven.
Once they’ve had 15 minutes to cool in the pan, you can remove them onto wire racks to finish cooling. After they come close to room temperature, I refrigerate them for another 30 mins – 1 hour. Cold cakes are easier to decorate! *pro tip*
The icing for this cake is of course – cream cheese icing. As if this cake needed an excuse to taste more rich! Always remember to use room temperature cream cheese and butter when whipping icing. And don’t shortcut by microwaving it! This may seem like a large amount of icing, but it’s a big cake! I use the same frosting batch for the piping work.
Once you’re ready to ice the cake, I recommend putting a crumb coat on first. This means that you’ll ice between the layers as usual and cover the whole cake in a thin, semi-naked type layer of icing. Use an offset spatula and a baker’s scraper to get the edge clean. Then you refrigerate the cake another 30 mins to harden up the icing, then come back with another layer over the exterior. This helps the edges look clean and professional. If you’re not doing any piping or decorative work, feel free to skip all that and just ice it however you’d like.
Once the base layer of the icing is done, you can decorate to your heart’s content. I decided to do a salted caramel drip down the side. This was my first time doing the drip, so as you can see, the caramel was a bit too warm so it slid down the cake longer than I would have liked. But nonetheless, it’s still a really cool effect. Salted caramel is really easy to make and once you cool it down, you can put it in a squeeze bottle like this one for the drip:
As the salted caramel cools, it hardens. So you want it to be warm enough to drip down the cake, but not too warm to control. Unfortunately, this is a test-to-see technique.
I do the drip down portion first seen above, then I put a circle around the top edge to tie everything together. The top edge doesn’t have to be perfect if you’re piping the top edge like I did.
I piped using Wilton piping bags and the open star tip to do both borders on this cake. Then I used a writing tip for the carrot and a grass tip for the green part of the carrot. Finally, I added crushed pecans in a moon shape to frame the carrot design. I love how this turned out!
Because the icing and glaze have a lot of sugar in them, I put less sugar in the batter which I think helps even it out. Cakes with cream cheese icing can be super sweet, so feel free to leave the glaze out if you like your desserts less sweet. It will still be moist without the glaze!
Carrot Cake with Buttermilk Glaze
Ingredients
For the Cake:
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 4 large eggs
- 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract
- 2 1/2 cups grated carrot
- 1 8 oz can crushed pineapple, drained
- 1 cup sweetened shredded coconut
- 1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
For the Buttermilk Glaze:
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 cup buttermilk
- 1/2 cup butter
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
For the Cream Cheese Icing:
- 16 oz cream cheese, room temp
- 1 1/2 sticks butter, room temp
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 8 cups powdered sugar
- 3 tbsp heavy cream
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350. Line 3 9-inch round baking pans with a circle of parchment paper and spray the sides with cooking spray. Set aside
- In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Set aside. In a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, mix eggs, sugar, vegetable oil, buttermilk, and vanilla at medium speed until combined.
- On low speed, add the dry ingredients in 3 batches until blended. Fold in carrot, pecans, pineapple, and coconut. Pour batter into prepared cakepans. Bake for 30-40 minutes until the center is set and a wooden toothpick comes out clean. The tops will be dark brown.
- While the cake is baking, prepare the glaze by combining all ingredients except vanilla in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Boil, stirring often for 4 minutes then remove from heat and whisk in vanilla. Set aside.
- Drizzle Buttermilk Glaze evenly over layers right when you remove them from the oven; cool in pans on wire racks 15 minutes. Remove from pans, and cool completely on wire racks. Refrigerate for 30 minutes – 1 hour to stiff up the cake for frosting.
- While the cakes are in the fridge, prepare the cream cheese frosting. Whip the cream cheese and butter in a stand mixer with the whisk attachment on high speed until fluffy. Add in powdered sugar slowly on low speed. Add in cream, salt, and vanilla.
- Remove the cake layers from the fridge and ice in between each layer, then do a thin crumb coat on the exterior and top. Use an offset spatula and a baker's blade to get your edges as straight as possible. Refrigerate for another 30 minutes, then put a final thin coat of icing on top.
- You can use the additional icing for piping in whatever design you'd like. Add a salted caramel drip to the side using a squeeze bottle if you'd like.
