The Best Carrot Spice Cake with Brown Butter Frosting

Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice - Why You'll Love This Recipe

The warm baking spices that flavor this Carrot Spice Cake are what all our fondest memories are made of. What is it about cinnamon and sugar that brings us right back to licking the spoon as a child?

This homemade Carrot Spice Cake has no shortage of cozy baking spices ready to be remembered. The rich quantities of cinnamon, ground ginger, clove and nutmeg compliment the roasted carrot and apple just so.

As for sweetness, we chose to use a combination of light brown and granulated sugars. Baking this cake with light brown sugar adds a subtle note of caramel-like molasses flavor. Meanwhile, granulated white sugar helps keep the cake light, fluffy and springy.

Brown Butter Frosting ties all of these delicous flavors together like a nice, little bow.

Roasted Carrot & Apple Spice Cake

This unique Carrot Spice Cake recipe features a roasted apple and carrot puree that is baked right into the batter. Most carrot cakes call for raw, grated carrot, however, I can assure you - roasting the carrot is the way to go!

Roasting the carrots and apple for this cake helps to concentrate the flavors and coax our the carrot and apples' natural sweetness. The flavor is phenomenal. After roasting, the carrot and apple and pureed in buttermilk before being added to the spiced cake batter. The results are delicious - tender and moist with just a hint of tang and sweet carrot flavor.

What Spices are in Carrot Cake?

• Cinnamon: Ground cinnamon is essential to complimenting the roasted carrot and Brown Butter Frosting in this cake.
• Ginger: Ground ginger root adds an almost citrus-like spice to this homemade Carrot Spice Cake recipe.
• Clove: Cloves are best known for adding warmth and aromatics to baked goods. Be sure to measure with care, too much clove can easily over-power your bake. Just enough clove, as in this recipe, will add in enticing warming spice and leave your kitchen smelling amazing.
• Nutmeg: We recommend using freshly grated nutmeg, whenever possible. While not quite as intense as the other spices for this cake, nutmeg lends lovely nutty, floral notes.

Spice Substitution

• Pumpkin Pie Spice: Pumpkin Pie Spice is often made up of these same spices listed, but in slightly different ratios. We tweaked and tested several spice ratios to perfect this scratch carrot cake recipe. However, spices can be expensive and we understand you may not have all these things on hand. If pumpkin pie spice is what you keep in your cupboards, feel free to substitute about two tablespoons for slightly different results.

How To Make This Cake Batter

While many carrot cake recipes call for vegetable oil, I have found that the creamed butter method produces the lightest and most flavorful results for this recipe.

Baker's Journal: Avoid Over Mixing - I like to finish the last moments of mixing with a rubber spatula to fold in any of the remaining flour mixture without overworking the batter.

4. If adding chopped nuts, use a rubber spatula to gently fold the nuts into the batter.

Nuts about Spice Cake: Adding Pecans or Walnuts

We love the buttery pecan crunch studding this moist cake recipe, but you are welcome to omit the nuts, if you prefer. You are also welcome to substitute walnuts in this Carrot Spice Cake, for a more delicate texture.

Pro Tip: Toasting Nuts - Chop first, THEN Toast! When baking with chopped nuts, we recommend measuring first, chopping second, and then toasting. After chopping, shake the chopped nuts in a mesh sieve or strainer to remove the fine dusty particles that will burn in the oven. Transfer to a baking sheet and toast in a hot oven for 4 - 5 minutes, or until lightly golden and aromatic. Toasting helps to awaken aromatic oils in the nuts and enhances their flavor greatly.

Brown Butter Frosting

A good frosting can take a great cake from everyday to extraordinary and that's exactly what’s going on with this Brown Butter Frosting. This is a simple American-style buttercream of whipped fats and powdered sugar. (No melted sugar syrups or stiff peaks required!)

Here we are using brown butter and some cream cheese for a hint of that classic, tangy cream cheese frosting flavor! If you have a nice maple syrup on hand, as we New Englanders always do, we recommend whipping a bit of that in, too. So good!

Liquid Gold: Brown Butter

Just like how roasting brings out the best in your nuts and carrots, browning your butter takes this humble staple to a whole other level. Gently cooking your butter to caramelize the milk solids brings out tons of toasty, nutty, flavors. This toffee-like richness is the perfect compliment to our homemade Carrot Spice Cake.

The process of making brown butter requires your undivided attention (to prevent burning) but only takes a couple of minutes to make. Check out our full post on How To Make Brown Butter for step by step instructions and more recipe inspiration.

For the Brown Butter Frosting, chill the butter back to a softened state before proceeding. All of those beautiful little caramelized bits will subtly speckle your frosting like stars in the city sky. 

The recipe below makes a smaller amount of frosting used to achieve the naked frosted look, as pictured. If you prefer a sweeter, more generous swoosh of frosting, and who could blame you - feel free to make a double batch.

Keep Cakes Moist with Simple Syrup

If you will be baking the cake a day or two before consumption (or displaying a naked cake for a while before slicing), we recommend brushing the surface of the cool cakes with simple syrup before frosting.

Simple syrup is just sugar melted into water and can be done with a kettle, stovetop or microwave. This technique is used by most commercial bakeries and is an easy way to avoid dry cakes. We usually use a 2:1 sugar to water ratio but a diluted maple syrup could also work wonders for this Carrot Spice Cake.

King of Carrot Flowers - Dehydrated Carrot Decoration

As seen in the photos, we decorated this Carrot Spice Cake with pumpkin seeds and dehydrated carrot and parsnips that were cut to look like flowers. In all honesty, the dehydrating process is very long and, while beautiful, not terribly edible. However, if you’d like to tackle this show-stopping garnish at home, it is quite possible. (Assuming you don’t need your oven for any other tasks!)

How To Make Carrot Flowers

1. Preheat your oven to its’ lowest setting - around 125° Fahrenheit (52° celsius). If your oven doesn’t go quite that low, as ours does not, slightly prop open your oven’s door with a kitchen towel for the duration of baking.
2. Slice rounds of fresh carrots and parsnips very thin, about 1/16 inch. We used the widest carrots and parsnips we could find to help account for shrinkage in the oven. Even still, our carrots flowers were teeny-tiny, about the size of a dime.
3. Dip the sliced roots in a boiling water bath for one minute before plunging them into ice water. This boiling and chilling process, called “blanching and shocking”, will help to preserve the color of your vegetables, particularly the carrots, during dehydration. Dry your sliced carrots and parsnips between two clean dish towels.
4. Cut slits, (we did about five slits per) like spokes of a bicycle tire through each round. Be careful not to cut completely into the center. You can stack a few slices or similarly sized rounds to help speed up this process, but it is rather tedious. Line sliced rounds on a parchment or silicone lined baking sheet.
5. Bake the sliced carrots and parsnips for five to seven hours, turning once or twice, until all the moisture has evaporated. You will be left with crunchy, dry “flowers”. These flowers can be prepared well ahead of time and stored in an airtight container for several weeks.