Carrot Cake with Buttermilk Glaze and Cinnamon-Cream Cheese Frosting
The glaze makes this cake wonderfully moist and with cream cheese frosting, it is very rich. This is not a low-calorie dessert, but it is very tasty. I found this in Bon Appetit and it is the only carrot cake recipe I make now.
Equipment
- 3 8" or 9" cake pans
Ingredients
Cake
- 3 cups flour
- 1½ tsp baking soda
- 3 tsp cinnamon ground
- ¾ tsp salt
- 2¾ cup sugar
- 4 large eggs
- 1⅛ cup buttermilk
- 1⅛ cup vegetable oil
- 1½ tsp vanilla
- 3 cups carrots peeled and grated
- 2¼ cups coconut flaked
- 12 oz crushed pineapple in juice
- 1½ cup pecans coarsely chopped
Glaze
- 1 cup sugar
- ½ cup buttermilk
- ½ cup unsalted butter
- 1 Tbsp light corn syrup
- 1 ½ tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp vanilla
Frosting
- 16 oz cream cheese room temperature
- ¾ cup unsalted butter room temperature
- 6 cups powdered sugar
- 3 Tbsp brown sugar
- 2¼ teaspoons vanilla
- 1½ teaspoons cinnamon
- ½ cup pecans coarsely chopped, optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease and flour 3 round cake pans.
- Cake: Whisk first 4 ingredients in medium bowl. Beat sugar, eggs, buttermilk, oil and vanilla in large bowl until smooth. Beat in dry ingredients. Fold in carrots, coconut, pineapple with juice and pecans. Transfer batter to prepared pans. Bake 20-25 minutes or until tester inserted into center comes out clean.
- Remove from oven. Let cakes sit for 5 minutes or so before removing from pans. Using a bamboo skewer, poke deep holes all over cake rounds.
- Glaze: While cake is cooking, bring first 5 glaze ingredients to boil in large saucepan. Boil until glaze is a light amber color. Glaze will thin out when almost done. Remove from heat; mix in vanilla. Spoon hot glaze evenly over warm cake. Cool cake rounds completely.
- Frosting: Beat cream cheese and butter in a large bowl until fluffy. Add powdered sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon; beat until blended. Frost cake and decorate as desired.
Notes
If there are tree nut allergies among your guests, you can omit the pecans without losing too much flavor. Although I haven't tested it yet, I'm sure you can substitute the flour for 1:1 gluten-free flour if there is someone that needs to avoid gluten.
If you omit pecans due to allergies, you can garnish the cake with toasted coconut instead.
Another option for the cake is to make it in a 9 x 13 pan, which is used in the original recipe. It's not as elegant a presentation, so we've gone with a 3-tiered cake. If you want to make this in a 9x13 pan, just cut the cake and frosting ingredients by 1/3. There should be no changes to the glaze recipe.