The very best Carrot Cake, covered with tangy lemon cinnamon cream cheese frosting. This cake is made with butter instead of oil for even better flavor and a little extra structure so we can pack in lots of extra carrots!
What is it about springtime and carrot cakes? They really do go together perfectly.
Just like the french vanilla lemon blueberry scones I shared early in the week, carrot cake is a perfect addition to spring and summer brunches or a stellar after-dinner dessert. Fluffy white cream cheese frosting, bright orange specks of carrots – carrot cake is a sure sign that spring has arrived.
I first shared this recipe waaaay back in 2011. Six years ago – practically a lifetime in food blogging terms. I generally let my old recipes stay where they are, but I recently remade this carrot cake with lemon cinnamon cream cheese frosting and decided the post needed a facelift.
A few tweaks to the ingredients, some shiny new pictures, and a spot on the front page for a bit. This cake was just too good to hide away behind six years of recipes!
{And speaking of shiny new pictures, take a look at the pictures that were in the original post. ↓↓↓ Yikes! Let’s pour one out for the good old days of food blogging, when a poorly lit picture taken on a point-and-shoot camera immediately got thousands of pageviews from Tastespotting.}
So let’s just jump on into this carrot cake recipe, because it’s too good to keep stalling.
There are zillions of different carrot cake recipes, and the best one is the one that meets all your carrot cake requirements. For me, this means lots of cinnamon, LOTS of carrots, light on the nuts, and absolutely no pineapple whatsoever. I love you in my fruit salad, but not in my cakes!
I like plain vanilla cakes sky high and light and fluffy. But carrot cakes? I always prefer mine to be dense. I find that cakes that wind up in the refrigerator, like this one because of the cream cheese frosting, hold up much better when dense.
To get this cake a little more dense – which also allows it to hold up to the addition of SO MANY carrots – we’re going to make it with butter instead of oil. Because butter is solid at room temperature, the crumb will tighten up a little when the cake is stored in the refrigerator.
Let’s pause for a second and talk about that refrigeration…
This always comes up with cream cheese frosting. Do you have to refrigerate it? How long can it sit out? It’s time for my favorite subject… kitchen chemistry!
Kitchen Chemistry
Sugar acts as a preservative. (Think about making jam — it’s the sugar content that allows us to can jam and save it for months at room temperature.) Sugar is hygroscopic, meaning it absorbs water. It can draw the water out of dairy , thus reducing the amount of water available for growth of bacteria. Butter, cream, and cream cheese are stabilized by all the sugar, and thus safe to store at room temperature for up to three days if the sugar content is sufficient.
So, sugar acts as a preservative. Great! But what’s that about needing sufficient sugar content?
Cream cheese is roughly 33% fat and up to 55% water — that’s a lot of water! So you need a lot of sugar to draw out all that water to act as a preservative.
You need (roughly) a pound (4 cups) of confectioners sugar per half-pound (8 ounces) of cream cheese to stabilize the frosting enough to let it sit out at room temperature. This frosting contains 16 ounces of cream cheese and 4 ounces of butter, but only 3 cups of confectioners sugar. So yes, this cake does require refrigeration!
Whew! Are you still with me after our kitchen chemistry explanation?
Now that we know we need to refrigerate our cake, we want to make sure it’s a little denser. A cake that is dense generally has excess moisture, and more moisture prevents the cake from getting as stale. Don’t worry, this isn’t pound cake level dense – it’s just not airy. To make sure it has that extra moisture and density, grate your carrots fresh – don’t buy the bags of pre-grated carrots!
It’s delicious and well worth the extra effort, trust me!
The one thing everyone seems to agree on when it comes to carrot cake? Cream cheese frosting!
Now, look. I’ll willingly admit that I am not the biggest fan of cream cheese frosting. It’s just so… sweet. Tooth-achingly, cloyingly sweet. We don’t need such a sweet frosting to cover up our delicious carrot cake!
Instead, we’ll add some amazing flavors that aren’t sweet: cinnamon and lemon. Such a perfect pairing! The frosting stays light and fresh, but still has that sweet tang you expect for a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.
What are your carrot cake preferences? Nuts? No nuts? Pineapple? No pineapple? Do you (shudder) add raisins to yours? Light and fluffy or deliciously dense? Where do you stand?
I’ve made this cake a few times since my initial cake six years ago. Every time I’ve brought it somewhere to share, there has been nary a single dense, carrot-filled, pineapple-free, slightly nutty crumb left. I’m going to go ahead and call this carrot cake with lemon cinnamon cream cheese frosting a true crowd-pleaser.
A easy delicious and moist layered carrot cake, covered with tangy lemon cinnamon cream cheese frosting.
Store the cake in the refrigerator after frosting.
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