Keto Carrot Cake With Sugar-Free Cream Cheese Frosting
April 18, 2019
Introduction
What’s one way you can successfully coax your kids to eat their veggies? Craftily hide them in your desserts. Like in a carrot cake! But we’re not saying that you can’t just enjoy a slice of a well-made carrot cake. After all, it’s delicious. Especially if paired with its usual partner-in-crime, cream cheese frosting.
Now, since carrot cake is made of real veggies, carrots to be specific, you would think that it’s keto-friendly, right? Not quite. A regular carrot cake is not only made up of carrots. It also has other ingredients such as sugar, flour, and cream which make it a no-go for a keto diet.
But don’t worry. We have a keto-friendly carrot cake recipe that’s sure to be low-carb and sugar-free. Get ready to indulge yourself in a delicious guilt-free carrot cake with this awesome keto carrot cake recipe. Complete with sugar-free keto cream cheese frosting too!
Reviews
35 minutes
About 12 Slices
Ingredients
Keto Carrot Cake Batter
| 4 Eggs | |
| 1/3 cup Olive oil | |
| 2 tsp Vanilla extract | |
| 1 cup Lakanto Monk Fruit Sweetener | |
| 2 cups Almond flour | |
| 2 tbsp Coconut flour | |
| 2 tsp Baking soda | |
| 1/2 tsp Baking powder | |
| 1 tsp Ground nutmeg | |
| 1 tbsp Ground cinnamon | |
| Pinch of Salt | |
| 1 stick of butter, melted | |
| 1/2 cup pecans or nut of choice, chopped | |
| 2 cups of Carrots, shredded |
Keto Cream Cheese Frosting
| 8 oz Cream cheese, softened | |
| 1/2 cup Lakanto Powdered Sweetener | |
| 1/2 stick of Butter | |
| 1 tsp Vanilla extract | |
| 1/3 cup Heavy cream |
Nutritional Information
Directions
Pour the eggs, olive oil, and vanilla extract into a mixing bowl.
Pour all the dry ingredients for the cake batter into the mixing bowl and blend them together.
Add the shredded carrots, chopped pecans, and melted butter into the mixing bowl and blend them together.
While the cake is baking, make the keto cream cheese frosting.
Assemble the keto carrot cake.
Notes
Tools
- Cake pans: this is where you'll be pouring the cake batter before putting it in the oven. Prepare two 6-inch cake pans if you want a double-layer cake. If you want a single-layer cake, prepare a 9-inch cake pan.
- Parchment paper: we'll be lining our cake pan/s with this to prevent the carrot cake from sticking.
- Mixing bowl: you'll be mixing/blending your wet and dry ingredients here.
- Whisk, spatula, or electric hand mixer: you'll be using this to mix your wet and dry ingredients. If you want to save time and effort, you may use an electric hand mixer. But a whisk and spatula should do just fine.
- (Optional) Blender or food processor: if you want your cream cheese frosting to have the best consistency, you can blend the ingredients in a blender or food processor.
Other Notes
- If you want to add more cake layers or increase the width of the cake, just increase the proportions of this recipe. You will also need to monitor and probably adjust the baking time.
- You can add even more spice to this keto carrot cake by adding ginger to the mix. Mince or shred your ginger and blend it together with the shredded carrots, chopped pecans, and melted butter.
- You can make this recipe dairy-free. Just replace butter with coconut oil in the cake. As for the cream cheese frosting, you can replace it entirely with whipped unsweetened coconut cream.
- If Lakanto's sweeteners aren't your thing, you can use other keto-friendly sugar substitutes such as erythritol or Swerve. Make sure to use liquid or powdered sweetener for the frosting.
- The cream cheese perfectly complements the flavor of the keto carrot cake. You can make it sweeter by adjusting the amount of powdered sweetener. If you want it to have a tangy taste, you can add a touch of lemon juice.
Key Ingredients In Recipe
Carrots
The star of the show. We will need shredded carrots to give this wonderful low-carb carrot cake its distinctive carrot flavor. It’s always best to use fresh vegetables when making something, and that is true with this carrot cake recipe. What we’re saying is, use fresh carrots as much as possible. This will ensure that our keto carrot cake will turn out great and delicious.
Pecans
Another important ingredient for this keto carrot cake recipe is your choice of walnuts or pecans. We chose to go with chopped pecans for this recipe as they are low in carbs and high in fats, perfect for a keto-friendly dessert recipe. They can act as both cake filling and garnish. Not to mention that they taste great too!
Feel free to go with walnuts though. We’re sure that they’d work well with this keto carrot cake recipe too.
Olive Oil
A dry, chalky-tasting carrot cake is such a sad thing. We don’t want that. We want our keto carrot cake to be extra moist and scrumptious. And for that to happen, we’ll use a secret ingredient: oil.
But it can’t be just any regular vegetable oil or any other hydrogenated oil. Those are a no-no for keto. We need to use a low-carb keto-friendly oil. And that’s exactly what olive oil is. It may sound strange, but it will work really with our keto carrot cake recipe.
Lakanto Monk Fruit Sweetener
Cake isn’t cake if it isn’t sweet, and that holds true for carrot cake. But we can’t use sugar since we’re making a sugar-free carrot cake. Instead, we’ll be using the keto-friendly Lakanto Monk Fruit Sweetener. It’s a great sugar substitute as it’s zero glycemic, and it doesn’t have any aftertaste. It also has a 1:1 ratio to sugar, which makes it easier to convert traditional carrot cake recipes into keto-friendly ones. And most importantly, it tastes great!
Almond Flour and Coconut Flour
Flour creates the structure and texture of the carrot cake. We can’t make one without it. However, regular wheat flour won’t do as it’s very high in carbs. Instead, we’ll be using a keto-friendly flour substitute. Well actually, we’re using a mix of two keto-friendly flour substitutes in this recipe: almond flour and coconut flour. The combination of these two flour will give our keto carrot cake a thick yet fluffy structure. Make sure to use blanched almond flour as it will help create a smoother batter.
Cream Cheese
To go with our delicious keto carrot cake is its usual partner, the cream cheese frosting. And we can’t make cream cheese frosting without cream cheese. Aside from tasting great, it’s also keto-friendly too, only amounting to 9.4g net carbs per cup (8 oz.). And that’s all the cream cheese we need to create our keto cream cheese frosting.
Lakanto Powdered Monk Fruit Sweetener
To act as the powdered sugar substitute for our keto cream cheese frosting, we have Lakanto’s powdered monk fruit sweetener. It has all the same amazing qualities as the classic version. The only difference is that it’s in powdered form.
Powdered sweetener works better than granulated sweetener when it comes to making frosting, which is why we’re using it.
Heavy Cream
Another key ingredient for our keto cream cheese frosting is heavy cream. It will give our keto frosting the ideal consistency. Be sure to use heavy cream and not regular whipped cream. Heavy cream is high-fat, low-carb which makes it keto-friendly. Perfect for our keto cream cheese frosting recipe.
Frequently Asked Questions
Traditional carrot cake isn’t keto-friendly. It has a high carb count due to its ingredients such as sugar and flour. But in this recipe, we used substitutes that are very low in carbs. We also limited the amount of carrots used (it’s less compared to traditional carrot cake). The combination of these adjustments we made resulted in a low-carb keto-friendly carrot cake.
Avocado oil is another keto-friendly oil, so yes, you can use it instead of olive oil. Just note that it is usually more expensive than olive oil.
You may use coconut oil instead of olive oil, but there will be changes to the texture and flavor of the keto carrot cake.
You can, but you will need to make up for it by adding more almond flour in the correct ratio. It should be around 4:1 (almond flour to coconut flour ratio). Do note that this will alter the carb count, and may result in a less fluffier carrot cake.
Sure, you can skip the pecans or any other nuts. And you don’t have to worry about adjusting any of the other ingredients. The recipe should still work just fine.
Yes, this recipe should work for cupcakes or muffins. You’d have to alter the baking time to 20 minutes instead of 30-35 minutes.
You can top your carrot muffins or cupcakes with the keto cream cheese frosting from this recipe. Alternatively, you may garnish them with grated carrots or chopped pecans. Or you can do both!
Yes, you can. It’s still best eaten fresh, but you can store it on the counter for 3 to 4 days, or in the fridge for up to a week. If you want to store it for much longer, you can keep it in the freezer (wrapped tightly with plastic wrap). It should last for 2-3 months.
You could use packed shredded carrots, but we can’t guarantee that the cake would taste as great. It’s still best to use fresh carrots and shred them yourself.
Freshly grated carrots tend to be juicier than pre-shredded carrots. Also. pre-shredded carrots may contain preservatives, which could affect the overall taste and texture of your carrot cake.
If you still want to proceed with pre-shredded carrots, consider adding a little moisture to the batter. An extra tablespoon of melted butter or a splash of unsweetened almond milk should suffice. This will compensate for the drier texture.
You can try making this recipe with grated zucchini. It has a much lower carb count than carrots, which makes it a great low-carb alternative. It does have a milder flavor though, so you’ll have to make up for it by adjusting the spices and sweetness in the recipe.
Wrap Up
With this low-carb keto carrot cake recipe, we keto-dieters can finally have our cake and eat it too. This delectable low-carb carrot cake, complete with its cream cheese icing (which is keto too), will surely be a favorite within the family. And since it’s low-carb (a serving only amounts to 4.2 net carbs), everyone can enjoy it, be they keto or non-keto!
Never feel guilty again for indulging in a delicious, sweet and aromatic carrot cake because this recipe has you covered! And don’t forget the cream cheese frosting it just takes it up a notch! You can have this keto carrot cake as a snack or serve it during a special occasion (it works perfectly as a birthday cake too if you want).
