Carrot Cake {Gluten Free}

September is always busy, but every year I seem to forget that fact, and am surprised how quickly it passes. The 15th was my grandpa’s 80^th birthday, but it’s the first day of October as I am finally posting about it! We celebrated with extended family and gluten-free cakes.

I was surprised the carrot cake was more of a hit than the chocolate cake.

We found the recipe on Elana’s Pantry, a paleo blog. (For some of you who don’t know what the paleo diet is, it excludes all grains, so it is even more restrictive than eating gluten-free. Many of Elana’s recipes are almond-flour or coconut-flour based, rather than using rice flour.)

We followed the carrot cake recipe to the letter. Not. I’m always giving my mom a hard time for modifying recipes before she even tries them.

This cake calls for agave nectar, but it has a distinct taste, so she substituted half the agave for honey, keeping it sugar-free. Instead of grapeseed oil, she put olive oil. Lastly, she omitted the walnuts. The actual cake is also dairy-free.

photo source Elana's Pantry

Dry ingredients:

3 cups blanched almond flour

1 teaspoon celtic sea salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon nutmeg

Wet ingredients:

5 eggs

½ cup agave nectar (or ¼ agave, ¼ honey)

¼ cup grapeseed (or olive) oil

3 cups carrots, grated

1 cup raisins

1 cup walnuts

Directions:

In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, mix the wet ingredients. Stir the wet ingredients into dry. Pour batter into 2 well-greased, round 9-inch cake pans. Bake at 325° for 35 minutes. Cool and spread with frosting. Elana recommends a coconut cream frosting recipe, but my mom made up her own concoction. Her creation is runnier and moister than the typical frosting, and has less carbs. It does have dairy and sugar in it as if to make up for their absence in the cake!

(1) 8oz package of cream cheese, softened

Sugar to taste (½  to 1 cup)

½ cup plain Greek yogurt

1 teaspoon vanilla

Beat the cream cheese till smooth, then add sugar, yogurt, and vanilla. Mix till smooth. Frost the cake and serve.


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