This is the Best Homemade Carrot Cake recipe because it is a sweet, moist, and dense Carrot Cake made from scratch with pineapple, coconut and pecans. When you want a dessert that everyone will love, make this cake!
You won’t find any boxed cake mixes in the ingredient list of this carrot cake. That is one of the reasons it is the Best Homemade Carrot Cake recipe.
The reason I had been working on perfecting this carrot cake recipe is because my Mother-in-Law had her 90th birthday this month and her favorite cake was her Mom’s carrot cake.
Celebrating 90 years of life is a special birthday celebration. So her birthday cake has to be special.
Obviously, I can’t get the recipe from her Mom, but I did my best to create what I think is the best homemade carrot cake.
With my Mother-in-Law, the cake had to be from scratch. There were no things as cake mixes in her house when she was growing up.
After much recipe tweaking, I think I have the perfect carrot cake recipe. I made this carrot cake for my Mother-in-Law’s birthday and it was a hit with everyone, especially Lois, my Mother-in-Law.
As a matter of fact, she requested that I make this cake not only for her birthday every year but also for every holiday dinner like Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.
In fact, I had to rescue this last piece of carrot cake so I could take these pictures! The cake went so fast that I did not have time to get pictures before it was mostly devoured.
Tips For Making the Best Homemade Carrot Cake
Use quality cake pans to bake the cake. It truly makes a difference in how well and how evenly the cake cooks. It is true. The folks at Bakepedia have actually tested cake pans and found this to be true.
Make sure the baking powder and baking soda you are using are fresh. I’ve made this mistake before. If they are not fresh, your cake may not rise.
Be sure not to over mix the batter! It is easy to do. The reason that you don’t want to over mix it is because too much air can get into the batter and cause the cake to fall when it cools.
Make it easy on yourself and make the cake and frosting the day before you want to serve it. That’s right. It will still be good.
Cover the cake and keep it at room temperature overnight, and refrigerate the frosting in an air-tight container.
See the printable recipe below for all the specific ingredient amounts and step by step instructions.
Go ahead and make this Carrot Cake and come back and leave a comment to let me know if you too think it is the Best Homemade Carrot Cake!
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This is the Best Homemade Carrot Cake recipe because it is a sweet, moist, and dense Carrot Cake made from scratch with pineapple, coconut and pecans. When you want a dessert that everyone will love, make this cake!
- 2-1/2 cups All Purpose Flour
- 1-1/4 teaspoons baking powder
- 1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 Tablespoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 cups sugar
- 4 eggs
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 2 cups grated carrots
- 1/2 cup chopped pecans
- 3/4 cup flaked coconut
- 1 8 oz can crushed pineapple drained
- 3 8 oz packages cream cheese softened
- 1 cup butter softened (2 sticks butter)
- 4 teaspoons vanilla
- 6 cups powdered sugar sifted
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Grease and flour either two 9-inch round cake pans or three 8" cake pans.
In a large bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Set aside.
In a stand mixer or large mixing bowl, mix together on medium speed the sugar, eggs, oil, and vanilla.
Add the dry ingredients (flour mixture) into the mixing bowl with the wet ingredients (eggs, sugar, etc.) and mix until combined. (Don't overmix)
Fold in the carrots, pecans, and coconut and pineapple into the mixture and stir.
Divide the batter evenly and pour into the prepared cake pans.
Bake in a preheated oven for about 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of each cake comes out clean.
Let the cake cool in the pans for about 10 minutes. After that let the cakes cool on wire racks. Let them cool completely before frosting.
Add the softened butter and softened cream cheese into a mixing bowl or stand mixer. Beat on medium speed until smooth.
Add the powdered sugar and vanilla and mix or 2 or 3 minutes until the frosting is smooth.
Either frost the cake immediately or refrigerate the frosting until you are ready to frost the cake.
Love your recipes but could you put ingredients in ounces as well as cups as l never get it right with cups . thank you.
Hi Susan, I’m happy to hear that you love my recipes. Yes, I use the standard US measurements. However, If you click on the word Metric just below the list of ingredients, it will change the measurements to metric measurements, such as grams.
Love how easy this cake is! I’ve been looking for one without coconut and pineapple. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Karly, I do too! I’m all about fast, easy, flavorful recipes! This one is right up your alley then.
Well, it looks very good, but I was rather shocked when I saw the first ingredient was 2 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour. That may have been acceptable 30-40 yrs ago, but health conscious folks nowadays do not permit white flour or white sugar or any other highly processed ingredients into their kitchens. Sorry, count me out.
Thank you, and the cake tastes even better than it looks!
Today, over 300,000 people search Google every month for Carrot Cake recipes, and 99% of the recipes have white flour and white sugar. If you prefer to follow a specific diet, then I would recommend googling a site that specializes in whatever special diet you follow, whether it be Paleo or Keto or something else. That is the wonderful thing about the world wide web, it has something for all the diverse people in the world.
This is one gorgeous looking cake! Grumpy’s favorite cake is carrot and he requests it every year for his birthday! I read the comment about someone being shocked with the amount of flour in the recipe and chuckled. Sounds like that person is more out of the loop due to the fact that millions of people still consume white flour! LOL I give you a 5 * rating – because when I do bake with flour and sugar, this recipe is the BOMB.
Thanks Shelby!
Hi Michele!
I’m going to try this cake for my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary this weekend…it sounds and looks amazing. Just clarifying something probably obvious…for the frosting, I should use unsalted butter? Just want to be sure. Let me know if you have a chance! Thanks!
-Becky
Hi Becky,
Congratulations on your parents 50th wedding anniversary! For the butter, you can use either salted or unsalted. I like to use unsalted because that way I can control the amount of salt that goes into the recipe.