Gluten Free Carrot Cake

A classic old fashioned carrot cake is made gluten free with this easy to make Gluten Free Carrot Cake Recipe.

The Story

One of the things I miss about the old days of blogging is learning the story behind a recipe. Blogging and sharing recipes has changed. Because of SEO changes less of the story is shared.

Instead, you will see ingredient lists, lots of detailed instructions, and FAQs. There is nothing wrong with those things. In fact, I often do the same thing. But when I share a gluten free recipe I feel like readers often want the story.

I want to share delicious easy to make gluten free recipes. But more than that I want to help you make your favorite recipes gluten free.

Gluten free baking can be challenging. There are disasters along with the successes. There is trial and error. They is a lot of adapting and changing.

My goal is that by explaining what I did and what worked and what it didn’t, it will help you translate the information to your favorite gluten free recipes.

So, today you are not just getting a gluten free carrot cake recipe. You are getting the story of how I came up with the best gluten free carrot cake that I have had.

What makes it the best gluten free carrot cake?

This recipe was over ten years in the making. I love carrot cake. It is one of my favorite old fashioned dessert recipes.

Carrot cake often gets a bad rap because people don’t like carrots, but in a good carrot cake you won’t even notice the carrots.

I grew up eating desserts like carrot cake and applesauce cake. They contain everyday ingredients that my mom usually had on hand. Those kinds of desserts are comfort food for me.

Over the last twelve plus years I have tried many times to get the best gluten free applesauce cake and the best gluten free carrot cake.

A couple of years ago I finally figured out how to make the best gluten free applesauce cake. It wasn’t until more recently that I figured out how to make the best gluten free carrot cake.

Over the years I have thrown away many carrot cakes because the gluten free version was so bad.

The main trouble that I had was getting the right texture. They were either too dry or way too gummy.

I tried different gluten free flour blends and I tried individual gluten free flours. Nothing was gave me the results that I wanted.

Last week I went back to the drawing board. I pulled out a stack of old cookbooks and checked some recipes online.

I compared my notes on recipes that I had tried in the past. I was determined to come figure out how to make carrot cake gluten free, and I wanted it so good that you could not tell that it was gluten free.

What I Did

One of the biggest issues was the cake being too dry or too wet. In most cakes oil gives you a more moist cake, so I knew that I wanted to stick with oil for the fat.

I needed to figure out how else to add moisture. To solve that I decided to go to my applesauce cake. Part of what makes the texture of applesauce cake so good is the applesauce.

In many recipes, you can replace part or all of the fat with applesauce. I wanted the moisture of the applesauce, but since this is a carrot cake I did not want the taste.

Replacing just part of the fat worked well. It gave me the moisture that I wanted without an applesauce taste.

I also shredded my carrots fine. Very fine. I used the fine part of my grater. This really helped the texture. You could hardly tell that it had carrots in it at all.

The last thing I did was change up part of the sugar with brown sugar. A combination of brown and white sugar helped both the taste and the texture.

The end result was a gluten free carrot cake that we loved! Only three people in the family could eat that cake and it was still gone in twenty four hours.

My gluten eating son and husband loved this cake. They said that they could not tell at all that it was gluten free.

Ingredients

• Bob’s Red Mill 1 to 1 Gluten Free Flour Blend ( This is the blend that works best in this recipe and the only blend I recommend for this cake. If you want the best results use Bob’s Blend. Use other blends at your own risk. )
• cinnamon
• baking soda
• baking powder
• salt
• granulated ( regular ) sugar
• brown sugar
• oil
• applesauce
• eggs
• carrots
• nuts, optional ( I left these out since my daughter has a nut allergy
• butter ( for frosting )
• cream cheese ( for frosting )
• powdered sugar ( for frosting )
• vanilla extract ( for frosting )

Frosting

Carrot cake and cream cheese frosting just go together. But if you need a gluten free dairy free carrot cake use a dairy free frosting. Or if you don’t like cream cheese frosting use your favorite frosting recipe.

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