Chocolate Carrot Cake – Cooking with Nana Ling

Bake up something wonderful with this Chocolate Carrot Cake Recipe. The sweet earthy carrot flavours mingling with rich, chocolate-y goodness is a flavour pairing you’ll quickly fall in love with.

This recipe is a decadent twist on my traditional Carrot Cake. It’s popular all year round, but is especially beautiful as an Easter Cake! Scroll down to see how it is easily transformed into a show-stopping Easter-themed treat.

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Ingredients

To make the cake, you’ll need:

• butter
• vegetable oil
• caster sugar / superfine sugar 
• brown sugar
• eggs
• grated carrot
• SR flour (or plain/all-purpose flour plus baking powder)
• bicarb soda
• cocoa powder
• cinnamon
• milk.

See the recipe card at the end of the post for ingredient quantities.

Equipment and additional ingredients

To make the cake, you’ll also need:

• 2 x 20cm round cake tins
• handheld electric or stand mixer.

The cake, as pictured above, is iced and decorated. The ingredients you’ll need to ice and decorate are outlined further below, along with the method.

How to make Chocolate Carrot Cake

Prepping

Grease and line the cake tins with baking paper and pre-heat your oven to moderate (180 degrees celsius / 355 degrees fahrenheit, fan-forced).

Mixing

Cream the butter and sugars. Then, add the oil and eggs and beat until combined.

Sift the flour, bicarb soda, cocoa powder and cinnamon together. Add these dry ingredients, together with other remaining ingredients, in about 3 batches – stirring (with a wooden spoon or spatula) between each addition until combined.

TIP: Don’t over-mix the cake batter. Stir until just combined.

Baking

Pour half of the chocolate carrot cake mixture into each of the tins and bake for 30 minutes or until a metal skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.

Allow the cakes to cool in their tins for 10 minutes before inverting and removing from the tins (and peeling off any baking paper that sticks to the cake).

Allow the cakes to cool completely on a cooling tray before icing.

The things that make this cake truly wonderful are the chocolate cream cheese icing and cute decorations.

To make the icing, you’ll need:

• cream cheese (the block/brick variety rather than the spread)
• butter (unsalted or salted is fine)
• icing sugar / powdered sugar
• cocoa powder
• milk.

To decorate, you’ll need:

• 1 bunch baby/Dutch carrots (with tops still attached)
• dark chocolate, roughly chopped (the “dirt” for the carrots to grow in)
• a chocolate Easter Bunny if you want to add a little extra at Easter (I’ve used a classic Lindt milk chocolate gold bunny here).

TIP: Before making the cream cheese icing, stand the cream cheese and butter at room temperature for half an hour.

Beat the cream cheese with a handheld electric or stand mixer until it is smooth and creamy. That should take about 1 minute on med-high speed.

Add the butter and beat again until the ingredients are combined and the mixture is smooth.

Sift in the icing sugar and cocoa powder and beat on low-med speed until combined.

Add the milk and beat again on low-med speed until combined.

Smooth out half of the icing evenly on top of one cake. Place the second cake on top of the icing – creating a sandwich. Smooth out the rest of the icing evenly on top of the second cake.

Decorating

Using a spatula, dab icing on top of cake to create texture. Sprinkle chocolate around edge of top of cake.

Wash and dry the baby carrots. Cut off the green tops about 5-6cm from the top of the carrot. Cut off the carrot tops so you have about 3-4cm of the top of the carrot. Set aside carrot tops for decorating.

With the remaining pieces of carrot, cut a 2-3 cm piece from the middle. This will slot into the cream layer of the cake sandwich (see picture below).

When ready to serve, push carrot tops into the cream around the edge of the cake. Insert the middle piece of the carrot in the cream layer below the carrot top, to create the illusion of a carrot poked into the cake.

If it’s Easter time, you can also add a chocolate bunny to the centre of the cake to make it extra special.

Variations

You can make this cake a bit different by:

• Chocolate Zucchini Cake – using grated zucchini in place of grated carrot
• Simple Chocolate Carrot Cake – enjoying the cake without icing or halving the icing quantity and leaving off the carrot and chocolate decorations
• Nutty Chocolate Carrot Cake – sprinkling the top with chopped walnuts instead of chopped chocolate.

Storage

It’s important to store this cake in the fridge. Covered, it should last up to a few days in the fridge.

You can serve the cake still cold from the fridge or let it sit at room temperature for about half an hour if you prefer the cake at room temperature.

You can also freeze un-iced cake carrot chocolate cake, well wrapped, for up to a few months.

FAQs

More chocolate recipes

Looking for other recipes like this? Try these: