Gluten Free Carrot Cake

That thing I expected to be a complete flop...

I'll be honest, I didn't expect this to work. A few of my coworker's are gluten free. One of them happened to have a birthday over the weekend so if I was asked if I wanted to bring a cake. Her only request was something with cream cheese frosting. Of course I said yes and then immediately got nervous. I've made other GF baked goods in the past, but cake is cake... and no one wants to ruin cake. Plus, the texture of a cake is the most important part... and the texture is usually the part that's slightly off in most GF recipes. At least for me. This recipe? I fed it to James as carrot cake is one of his favorites (and he's my poor guinea pig) and he loved it. You can barely tell a difference. Success!

I will say, mine was a bit tricky to get out of the pan. I just made it as a sheet cake and I had a bit of trouble removing the first piece... it came out like this:

Not the prettiest piece of cake, but the taste was still delicious. I refrigerated it overnight and it held together today when we devoured it at lunch! If you're gluten-free and love carrot cake, make this. Now. But don't grate the carrots by hand. I tried that and 3 cups of grated carrots is a LOT. Hence this cake didn't get finished until almost 11pm. 

Ingredients:

Cake:

-2C sugar *

-4 eggs

-1 1/2 C veg. oil* 

-2C all purpose GF flour mix*

-2tsp baking soda

-2tsp baking powder*

-2tsp cinnamon

-1tsp salt

-2tsp vanilla extract

-1C chopped nuts*

-3C grated or shredded carrots

Cream Cheese Frosting:

-4tbsp unsalted butter

-3oz cream cheese

-1tsp vanilla extract

-2 1/2C powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease cake pan (two round 9" pans, or one 9x13") or muffin cups if making cupcakes. 

Cream sugar & eggs together, then add oil & vanilla and mix until smooth.  While that's mixing, combine dry ingredients except carrots & nuts into a bowl and mix together. Slowly add dry ingredients to mixing bowl and continue beating until blended smooth.

Stir in nuts & carrots and pour into cake pans. Bake for 35-45 minutes rotating pan halfway through. Original recipe says 45-55, but I did 40 minutes and it was slightly overdone around the edges and on top. 

While cake is cooling cream butter, cream cheese & vanilla together in mixing bowl until smooth. Slowly and powdered sugar and beat until creamy. Add more cream cheese or powdered sugar until desired taste is achieved. This is a very mild cream cheese frosting which I loved as I'm not a huge fan of the tanginess of cream cheese. If you like really tangy cream cheese frosting you may want to add a bit more. James loves CC frosting though and licked both the beaters clean, so it was definitely a winner. I have to admit that even though I've always preferred buttercream, this was for sure one of the best tasting frostings I've made!

***

The ingredients listed are the amounts used in the original recipe. I made some slight changes, but I'm sure it'd be fine either way. I used just under 2C sugar as many reviews stated that the cake was too sweet. I didn't even know that was possible, but whatever. Some reviews also said the cake was too oily, so again I did just under 1 1/2C oil. It was plenty moist, but not at all oily. King Arthur's All Purpose baking mix worked great as the flour. It does NOT contain xanthum gum or guar gum though so I did add 1tsp of xanthum gum. Check to see if the mix you're using already contains one of those - if not you will need to add it. Also, I didn't know this until I started baking some GF things, but not all baking powder is gluten free. Check your labels! They all contain something to help absorb moisture and some contain wheat starch, though most use corn starch. If you can't find a gluten free baking powder you can make your own using this simple recipe here.

*Original recipe for this cake was found here.

Linked up with Gluten Free Yummy