How To make Gluten Free Carrot Cake

Here’s Kelly’s favorite carrot cake made with gluten free flour. It is really delicious. She’s been making this cake for over 30 years to rave reviews. This gluten free version is very tasty, moist and tender and the cream cheese frosting is the perfect topping.

This recipe is gluten free by using one-to-one gluten free flour.

Watch a Video

Here is a video of 2 Cooks in the Kitchen making Gluten Free Carrot Cake:

https://youtu.be/ahk3bIIfxls

The Ingredients For Gluten Free Carrot Cake

• 2 Cups 1 to 1 Flour
• 1 tsp Xanthan Gum
• 2 tsp Cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 2 Cups Sugar
• 1 tsp Baking Soda
• 3 Eggs
• 1 1/4 Cups Vegetable Oil
• 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 2 Cups Shredded Carrots
• 1 Cup Crushed Pineapple, drained
• 1 Cup Shredded Coconut
• 1/2 Cup Chopped Pecans

Frosting:

• 3 Cups Powdered Sugar
• 6 Tbls Butter, softened
• 6 Oz Cream Cheese, softened
• 1 tsp Vanilla
• 1/2 Cup Chopped Pecans for topping.

Soften Butter and Cream Cheese

Before you get started on this cake, you’ll want to take the butter and cream cheese out of the refrigerator to soften. You won’t need them until you make the frosting so they will have plenty of time to soften at room temperature.

Gluten Free Flour

We’ll start this recipe with 2 cups of gluten free flour in a large mixing bowl. We use Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Flour, which is available a lot of places these days. If you can’t find that particular brand you can look for One-To-One flour which is pretty much the same thing, just a different brand. You need a combination of flours without gluten and starches to make it hold together without gluten and these companies have put together a good blend that really works well in place of wheat flour.

Xanthan Gum

You’ll find that some gluten free flour already contains xanthan gum but others don’t. Our bag of baking flour does not contain xanthan gum so we need to add some. Different amounts are recommended for different uses so it might be better to add it yourself. We found this in the baking isle at the store. We have a rough guide for how much to add:

• Cookies 1/4 tsp per cup of flour
• Cakes 1/2 tsp per cup of flour
• Muffins 3/4 tsp per cup of flour
• Breads 1 to 1 1/2 tsp per cup of flour
• Pizza Crust 2 tsp per cup of flour

If your gluten free flour already contains xanthan gum you probably don’t need to add any for this recipe but you might want to add a little if you are making bread or pizza crust. Since we are using 2 cups of flour we will add 1 tsp of xanthan gum.

Cinnamon and Salt

We’ll give our dry ingredients a little flavor with 2 teaspoons of cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

Sugar and Baking Soda

Next we’ll add 2 cups of granulated sugar. We haven’t tried any alternative sweeteners with the gluten free flour but we know it works with white sugar. We’ll also need a teaspoon of baking soda and that will be all our dry ingredients.

Stir To Combine

We’ll stir all the dry ingredients together to get them well mixed. You can do this with a whisk, it really works wonders for mixing dry ingredients too.

3 Eggs

Next we’ll add three whole eggs. You can just crack them right into the mixing bowl with the dry ingredients.

1 1/4 Cups of Oil

We’ll add 1 1/4 cups of vegetable oil. We’re just using a generic brand of soybean oil usually labeled as vegetable oil. You can use whatever kind of oil you want but you probably want one without a lot of flavor.

1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract

Next we’ll add one teaspoon of vanilla extract. You’ll want to use only real vanilla extract as imitation vanilla flavoring is truly vile stuff in our opinion. Vanillin is manufactured from a substance called guaiacol. Most of the world’s guaiacol supply comes from petroleum and isn’t something we want in our carrot cake, or anywhere else for that matter. We’ll mix this all together with an electric hand mixer.

Grated Carrots

We’ll add two cups of grated carrots. We just grate them by hand, that’s easy enough. You can use the grater blade on a food processor but that ends up being a lot more clean up. You can also buy packaged grated carrots.

Crushed Pineapple

We’ll also add 1 can of crushed pineapple that has been drained. We put the pineapple in a strainer and let that drain.

Mix

Now we’ll mix the carrots and pineapple into the rest of our cake batter just to get it evenly distributed.

Shredded Coconut

Next we will add 1 cup of shredded coconut. We’re using an unsweetened shredded coconut from Bob’s Red Mill but we’ve also made this with the sweetened shredded coconut for baking and it works just fine. We’ll get that all mixed in.

Chopped Nuts

Lastly we will add 1/2 cup of chopped nuts. We prefer the flavor of pecans and we just buy whole ones and cut them up. You can use a different kind of nuts of you prefer. Once we get those all mixed in our cake batter will be done.

9 X 13 Baking Pan

Now we can pour our carrot cake batter into an greased 9 X 13 baking pan. We like a metal pan for this as it seems to cook more evenly but you can use a glass pan if you want. We use a coconut oil cooking spray but you could just rub vegetable oilor butter around the inside of the pan.

Bake At 350°

We will bake our carrot cake at 350° (Fahrenheit) for 50 minutes. At the end of that time we’ll give it the toothpick test to see if it’s done. You just insert a toothpick into the middle of the cake and if it comes out clean the cake is cooked. If the toothpick has wet batter on it you’ll need to cook it for 5 more minutes and then test again. When it is done we’ll put our cake pan on a cooling rack and let it cool completely before frosting it.

Make the Frosting

We’ll start our frosting by putting 3 cups of powdered sugar into a large mixing bowl. You’ll want a large enough bowl to make sure it doesn’t fly everywhere when you mix it.

Butter And Cream Cheese

To the powdered sugar we will add the butter and cream cheese that we have had out softening. We’ll cut these into smaller chunks so they mix easier.

Vanilla

We also want a teaspoon of real vanilla extract in our frosting.

Mix Well

We’ll mix this all together with an electric hand mixer. You could certainly make this frosting in a stand mixer if you want. For us, the hand mixer is easier to get out and to clean. This is where the size of your bowl matters.

Frost the Carrot Cake

Once the cake has cooled completely we can put the frosting on. Just plop it on and smooth it out with a knife, spoon or rubber spatula. You need to make sure the cake has cooled completely to room temperature or the frosting will not be right and you’ll be sad!

Add Nuts

Finally, we will sprinkle on the rest of our chopped pecans. This is the great finishing touch that adds just the right amount of chewiness to the total mouthfeel of our carrot cake.

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Try another gluten free dessert classic: Chocolate Mousse

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