Healthy Carrot Cake– gluten free, grain free, honey sweetened

This healthy carrot cake is delicious and easy to make, as well as suitable for many special diets. A gluten free dessert, this classic carrot cake is also free of nuts, grains, and refined sugar. Sweetened with a little honey and made with coconut flour, you can enjoy the flavors of carrot cake and still keep to your health goals. Also a GAPS dessert!

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Somehow, carrot cake became a spring dessert. It’s a little funny, because the carrots aren’t ready for harvest by Easter in many places. Maybe the carrots are one of the few produce items still around in early spring? Or maybe there is a vague association with the Easter bunny? Rabbits like carrots…

Whatever the reason carrot cake appears so often in springtime, it really deserves a spot year round. You can pretty much always locate a carrot or two for this delectable treat! Even somewhat less-than-perfect, limp, dry carrots perk up in a carrot cake.

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Given that carrots grow well in many climates and store well through the winter, people eat them in many ways and in many places. Being a vegetable, the humble carrot turns up in many soups, stews, casseroles, stir fries, salads… all sorts of main dishes and savory side dishes contain carrots. Plus, they are popular as a side dish all by themselves, either raw or cooked.

I use carrots all the time in soups, stews, and more. Sometimes we have roasted carrots flavored in different ways. I even use carrots in breakfast sausage now and then! But carrots also make an appearance in desserts.

A Little History of Carrot Cake

It turns out, as much as people around the world have used carrots in savory dishes, carrots in desserts are nothing new. From carrot puddings in medieval Europe to carrot desserts flavored with cardamom and rose in the Middle East to Indian sweet carrot pudding, carrots are for dessert as well as for dinner!

It makes sense, as carrots are a somewhat sweet vegetable. Using carrots as a sweetener makes sense, especially when sugars are less available or are expensive.

Carrots are also often quite affordable, unlike many fruits. They preserve well, and even can be stored for quite awhile. They also offer nutritional benefits.

While carrots appeared in 19th century European cakes, carrot cake as we know it began to gain traction in the United States when a carrot cake recipe appeared in the 1931 edition of The Joy of Cooking cookbook. During World War II sugar rationing, cooks turned to creative sweetening methods; carrot cake was a natural fit, and gained popularity in Britain and the U.S.

Later, as “health food” interest grew in the 1960s and 1970s, carrot cake got another boost. Vegetables for dessert? Brilliant!

Is This Carrot Cake Really Good for Us?

Well, it depends. It isn’t always so great for us. You don’t actually eat that much carrot in a slice of cake. Maybe the equivalent of a couple of carrot sticks. Carrot cake isn’t exactly a significant vegetable source.

Most carrot cake recipes call for loads of sugar, despite the sweetness of the carrots. Wartime rationing is long past, and sugar is cheap. There is usually plenty of white flour and sometimes other ingredients in carrot cake that aren’t exactly working for us. Then the frosting adds more sugar…

As ever, a dish can be made better or worse for us by choosing better or worse ingredients. Carrot cake doesn’t have to have all the sugar and refined flour to turn out well and taste delicious!

What makes this carrot cake better for us?

“Good for us” can vary somewhat by person. There are multiple ways of making carrot cake better for us, but I am going to suggest only a few of the ways to achieve a fairly healthy carrot cake. This isn’t a “health food”, exactly. It is a less harmful dessert to eat very moderately.

First, there is no gluten and no grain in this recipe. Gluten isn’t a problem for everyone. It is for us– because of celiac disease– and a lot of people have trouble with gluten, with other aspects of common gluten-containing flours, or both.

Grains aren’t inherently bad, either. However, if you don’t do well with grains (even gluten free, organic grains not sprayed with anything) or you are in a healing time and temporarily avoiding grains, it’s nice to have some options that don’t have any grain flour at all.

Coconut flour

I have used coconut flour for this healthy carrot cake. Almond flour is another popular grain free alternative, and low in carbs, but it is a lot harder to digest, high in oxalates, and a common allergen. I use almond flour some, but not very often. If you want an almond flour carrot cake, consider this one.

Eggs

There are a lot of eggs in this recipe. You can’t substitute for them, unfortunately. If you can’t use eggs, this is not the recipe you need. If you can use eggs, they add nutrition and help make the recipe good for you. I try to stick with pastured eggs.

Butter

There is butter in the cake as well. Coconut flour absorbs a lot of moisture; the eggs, butter, and carrots help keep the cake from being too dry. Good, grass fed butter is highly nourishing and part of a healthy diet. If you can’t use butter, though, you can use oil. I would try coconut oil first.

Honey

Finally, there is no refined sugar at all in this recipe. The carrots fill part of the need for sweetness. The rest is done by honey, which also helps keep the cake moist. This isn’t one of those recipes with a cup of honey, though. You need 1/3 cup, though you can reduce it to 1/4 or increase a bit if you want.

How to Make Healthy Carrot Cake

Start by getting your ingredients out and letting them come to room temperature. The butter (or coconut oil) needs to be soft, and it is best if the eggs and other ingredients aren’t cold. Also, line the bottom of an 8″ round cake pan with parchment and grease the sides well. Preheat the oven to 350° F.

Grate your carrots. You can peel them, or not. You see 3 carrots in the picture, but I actually used less than 2! One large or two small carrots will do. If, like me, you grate too much carrot, just save the extra for a salad topping, or do what I did– stick it in a soup for dinner! Measure out 1 cup for the cake.

You can follow the usual method of beating the butter with the honey and eggs first. That step is more helpful with sugar than with honey, as the sugar granules create texture when creamed with the butter first. Honey doesn’t do that. You may prefer the results when you cream first, but it works all right to combine everything except the carrots and nuts at once.

You can mix by hand or using a mixer; just be sure to get it all mixed very well. The batter will thicken over several minutes as the coconut flour absorbs moisture. Once it is mixed well, fold in the carrots and the nuts if you are using them.

Spread the batter in the prepared pan and bake 40-45 minutes at 350° F, or until edges are starting to brown and pull away from the pan and a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake emerges with few crumbs.

Cool 10-15 minutes in the pan, then invert cake on plate or cooling rack. Remove the parchment if it sticks to the cake.

How to Serve Carrot Cake

You can serve this cake entirely plain! That would be easy to pack for a picnic or bag lunch.

You can serve it with whipped cream, like I did. On the GAPS diet, I whipped cultured cream with a tiny bit of honey, and that is also delicious.

You can make the classic frosting for carrot cake– cream cheese frosting. The classic recipes are full of sugar, so if you want a better-for-you but still delicious version try this one or this meringue frosting. For the GAPS diet, make sure your cream cheese and yogurt are home-cultured using GAPS methods.

Alterations to Carrot Cake

• nuts– leave them out or try different nuts. I like pecans best, and walnuts second.
• add coconut– maybe increase the honey or butter to make up for the dryness.
• add raisins– another classic ingredient!
• pineapple is also a favorite add-in, but I haven’t tried it in this recipe. Let me know how it goes if you try it!
• increase or decrease the honey a bit. You can use regular sugar or a sugar substitute, but I haven’t tried it.
• use more or less of the spices, according to your taste
• try the Middle Eastern flavors of cardamom and rose water– I haven’t tried it yet, but it is on my list!
• double the recipe for a 2-layer cake
• make cupcakes– or call them muffins…