A delicious moist sugar free carrot cake made with a delicious sugar free cream cheese frosting.
This sugar free carrot cake recipe is actually dairy free. I wanted to keep the cake portion dairy free so that everyone could make it. The cream cheese frosting that I used on this recipe is not dairy-free, but if you would like to use a dairy free version, you can use my dairy free whipped cream recipe.
The cream cheese frosting recipe I used for this sugar free carrot cake is the same one that I used in my gluten free gingerbread cake roll and can be used as a topping or icing for any kind of cake recipes!
A Paleo Carrot Cake for Any Occasion
This low carb carrot cake is so versatile as you can make it for any occasion. You can bake it in any type of mould you want as I mentioned above. If you were to make it in a springform pan, you could make a delicious birthday cake smothered with this delicious sugar free cream cheese frosting.
When I made this recipe, there wasn’t actually any special occasion as I just felt like baking one, but it did taste a bit too good to share! I decided to cut the cake in individual portions and wrap them in saran wrap. The next day I brought half the batch over to work and gave them to some of my coworkers!
My coworkers had never eaten carrot cake as it’s not a very popular cake in Japan so they were quite happy to receive a delicious treat from ”abroad” as they quoted. They could not tell that these low carb carrot cake bars were in fact sugar free and gluten free. They were very impressed with the sweetness and moistness of this paleo carrot cake!
Why did I use erythritol and stevia to sweeten this Low Carb Carrot Cake?
For most of my baked goods recipes, you’ll notice that I always tend to use a mixture of both erythritol and stevia. That is because I find that using both sweeteners together make a better product altogether.
Erythritol when used in large quantities can produce this annoying cooling effect inside the mouth and can also give stomach problems for some people. Erythritol is about 70% the sweetness of sugar so you usually need to use a bigger amount than sugar or add another sweetener to it to match the exact sweetness of sugar.
Stevia on the other hand is 300% sweeter than sugar so you really don’t need to use a lot. I usually use between 1/32 teaspoon to 1 teaspoon max in any given recipes.
So why did I use erythritol and stevia for this recipe? Just like when baking with sugar, the chemical nature of granulated or powdered sugar, in this case erythritol, affects the texture, color and flavour of cakes. Adding erythritol to my baked goods recipes ensures they stay soft, moist and tender, but not always sweet enough.
This would not be possible with stevia alone. I could probably just use stevia to attain the perfect sweetness, but it wouldn’t make the cake as moist, in fact it would be pretty dry. By adding a little bit of stevia to the erythritol, I am able to create the perfect sweetness, avoid the cooling effect from the erythritol and keep my paleo carrot cake extra light and rich.
For example, in my Triple Chocolate Cheesecake, Caramel Cheesecake or Chocolate Birthday Cake recipes, you’ll notice that I use a combination of both erythritol and stevia powder.
How to make a Homemade Carrot Cake
This recipe showing you how to make a homemade carrot cake could not be easier! Baking without flour or sugar doesn’t have to be complicated. Both gluten and gluten free versions of cakes have more or less the same steps: mix and bake.
For this sugar free carrot cake recipe, the first thing you’ll want to do is grate your carrot with a cheese grater. You could also use a food processor or even thinly slice the carrot with a knife and then mince the slices as thin as you can if you don’t have a food processor. You can use any type of carrots for this recipe, though their colour will affect the final product! I used a red carrot for this recipe.
Once your carrot is grated, you simply want to mix your dry and wet ingredients separately. Add them all together in one large bowl with your grated carrot. You could even add chopped nuts or raisins, if you eat them, to this step.
For a paleo carrot cake, you would simply switch the erythritol for either maple sugar or coconut sugar and same thing for the dairy free whipped cream recipe!
Add the batter to any kind of baking mould, put it in the oven and you are good to go! For this recipe, I decided to make sugar free carrot cake bars as I used a rectangular baking pan, but you could make it in a 9” springform pan and make a layered cake. I also cut each portion and wrapped them in saran wrap for some portion control!
Now that you know how to make a homemade carrot cake, for what occasion will you make this amazing recipe?
Sugar Free Carrot Cake
A delicious and moist carrot cake with a delicious cream cheese frosting!
Ingredients
- 1 recipe sugar free cream cheese frosting (RECIPE HERE) OR
- 1 recipe dairy free whipped frosting (RECIPE HERE)
Wet Ingredients
- 180 g carrot about one large
- 4 eggs
- 60 ml refined coconut oil
- 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 120 ml unsweetened almond milk
Dry Ingredients
- 210 g blanched almond flour
- 35 g coconut flour
- 1 tsp stevia powder
- 1/4 cup erythritol or approved paleo sweetener
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp ginger powder
- 1/4 tsp ground cloves
- 1/4 tsp cardamon powder
- 1/2 tsp allspice
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.
Grate the carrot with a cheese grater.
In one large bowl, add the wet ingredients and combine.
In another large bowl, add the dry ingredients and mix well.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix with a silicone spatula until perfectly combined.
Add some parchment paper to a 9x13'' casserole dish. Pour the carrot cake batter inside the casserole and spread evenly.
Place in the oven on the middle rack and bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Once baked, take the cake out of the oven and let completely cool.
Once the cake is cooled, you can then spread the cream cheese frosting all over!
Recipe Notes
Nutritional info is for the carrot cake alone! If you add the cream cheese frosting or the dairy-free whipped frosting, you'll need to add the macros to that manually!
Elaine P says
Recipe sounds delicious. Is it possible to use a jar of baby strained carrots in place of shredded carrots. If so how much would you recommend?
Thanks, Elaine
Mira says
Hi Elaine, I’m thinking the canned carrots maybe too soft and they’ll puree inside the cake instead of being sliced sticks. I’m sure the cake will work out, but it might be softer than usual since canned carrots are very soft and have much more water than fresh ones.
Cind Merrill says
Love this recipe- I would add golden raisins to the batter and add unsweetened coconut to the topping.
Doraine says
I don’t have stevia powder, any substitute? Thanks
Mira says
You could use monk fruit, or instead of erythritol and stevia, some lakanto golden sweetener.
Deena says
Any suggestions to replace almond fourmy daughter has a peanut and nut allergy. Casava flour?
Mira says
Hi Deena, I’ve never used cassava flour, but I hear it’s a 1-1 replacement. Also sunflower seed flour could work.
Josh says
Made this last night, follow to a T except for the all spice.. it mattered not. It was delicious. Curious, your nutritional info is based on one slice. But how big is one slice??
Josh says
nevermind, I see – 12 bars.
Mira says
Thank you very much!! I’m glad you enjoyed them 🙂
Samantha says
Just made these and they are FANTASTIC! Spices were spot on and that frosting is amazing! Thanks for another recipe.
Cheryl Beach says
I am new to all this type of cooking. Your recipe for carrot cake looks wonderful and something I can make for my diabetic husband. The problem is you use measurements I am not used to (ie..g ml) and yet used tsp, cup. Could you do that for the other measurements please. Can’t wait to make this for my husband, he’s going to think he went to heaven!
Mira says
Hi Cheryl, if you click on US Imperial, the measurements will be converted. I don’t use cups for flour because the weight is not accurate depending on if you put a lot of stuff the cups with it. So I use grams/ounces for my recipes.
H. Claire says
I tried this recipe yesterday, and it’s delicious!!!! Thank you soo much for all the wonderful recipes you share on your website, most of the ones I’ve tried so far are just amazing. This cake is super moist and yummy. Even the carb-eaters in my family couldn’t stop eating it :-), even though they are usually great fans of “conventional” carrot cakes. Since I didn’t have cream cheese handy for the frosting, I replaced it with super thick and heavy cream (crème fraîche fermière crue from a nearby farm here in France), whipped with a bit of erythritol and vanilla, as well as some milk to get it soft enough that it was spreadable. It was wonderful, and the frosting is critical in my opinion to balance the spices in this recipe. The cake by itself is a bit overloaded with spices to my taste (and my husband agrees, he who yet adores spices), but becomes just right with the frosting that balances it’s taste well (on top of the fact that it adds a lot of fat, a must for a low carb diet).
Miranda says
We, in our family, don’t do low carb but I really love the recipes. Isn’t the amount of fat going to cause weight or some other issues?
Mira says
Hi Miranda, if you eat low carb, fat is not the enemy. We need to eat fat in order to burn energy so all low carb diets involve a pretty high amount of healthy fats.
Also, I suggest reading Jason Fung’s The Obesity Code, it talks more about how fat is not bad for us. The obesity and diabetic epidemic really started when people started eating low fat. Most low fats are filled with starches and sugars to replace the fatty parts and are really not healthy. I’ve been eating lots of fat for the past 3 years and down 95lbs 🙂
Sherry Thompson says
You cannot eat high carb high fat ..it will cause negative health issues, if you are going to make these recipes and since you enjoy them it may be time to consider coming to the dark side lol we dont have cookies but we do have bacon!!
Hélène Nicole says
Being mom of Mira, I got this in advance!
So delicious!
Merci Mira!