THE Moistest Carrot Cake ever to Exist with a Luscious Buttermilk Cream Cheese Frosting. The Perfect Balance of Sweet and Tang with a Hint of Vanilla and Buttery Notes Making This Cake an Unforgettable One.

Carrot Sheet Cake with Buttermilk Cream Cheese Frosting | URBAN BAKES

It’s now my understanding what pumpkin is to Autumn, carrot is that to Spring. Took some time or a few years to grasp that notion, but now I get it. Ha!

I think the reason I never understood the hype on carrot sheet cake is because I never had a REALLY good piece. I tried it in restaurants, bakeries, the prepackaged kind in grocers, none of it was ever satisfying. More a disappoint than anything else, I began to avoid carrot cake completely.

As with many foods we may have disliked in our earlier years, I began to think, with the science of baking learned overtime, maybe there is something I can do to make a carrot cake more flavorful, more meaningful. All-in-all, simply unforgettable. I want a cake that when you finish a bite and walk away, you find yourself gravitating back towards it, wanting another piece. You don’t why, but you keep coming back for more.

I got it! Did it with this one. I am utterly shocked at how much I LOVE THIS CAKE! Maybe everyone’s had that special one and that is why they love it. But for me, I always felt others were too dry, or had raisins in it or the spice was off. No. Not this one. This is perfect! I shared this sheet cake with 3 others who are carrot cake fanatics and it was so reassuring that they loved it and asked for more. Total tug on my heartstrings right there! 🙂

Here are 4 tips to keeping this Carrot Cake moist.

Oil or butter? Cakes that call for only butter may have a better flavor but can also be more on the dry end of the spectrum. Whereas, cakes that call for oil, lean towards a more even and tender crumb which is a far superior texture than those with only butter. This carrot cake uses oil and leaves the spices and carrot to give the flavor.
Keep the juice. Some recipes call to squeeze out the water content of the carrots, for example: in cookies to prevent spread. In cakes, you want to keep the juice to add moisture and not have dry specks of carrot.
Add the brown. White sugar is dryer than brown sugar because it lacks the touch of molasses giving the brown sugar its darker color. The molasses adds a syrup-flavor depth and naturally increases moisture. You want to use a combination of both white (dry) and brown (wet) sugar to bring out sweetness without overkill on the moisture level to prevent a collapsed cake.
Add the cream. If there is one ingredient I’ve seen many cakes go without, don’t skip this one. This is the magic! The true master of moisture in cakes, the sour cream! Some use pudding or yogurt but I prefer sour cream because of its creamy density that puddings and some yogurts lack. It has a neutral flavor and is an ingredient used in many other recipes aside from desserts therefore, highly likely to already be in your fridge. Sour cream takes the cake to the next level of moistness not on just day 1 of the baked cake but even days after!

Let’s get to this frosting!

If you’ve tried cream cheese frosting, chances are, at some point you may have tasted one that was too sweet or too tangy. It’s rare and many times tricky to achieve the right balance between sweet and tang in this type of frosting without it becoming too thick or thin.

The trick here is to use buttermilk powder. Not the liquid but the powder found in the baking isle of most grocers. It’s been a very long time since I bought a pint of buttermilk. Many times, it would go to waste because a recipe would call for a small amount and the expiration date was often too soon. The powder on the other hand, can last for a year in the fridge and you use it on an as needed basis.

This frosting has the right balance between sweet and tang with a hint of vanilla and buttery scent from the buttermilk powder with a smooth mouthfeel. It has the perfect spreadable consistency and can also be piped onto cupcakes if piped on slightly chilled. Definitely a must try!

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