Best Ever Gluten-Free Carrot Cake

We’ve always had a favourite carrot cake recipe and we’ve been making it for years. It’s one of those cakes that people request as a birthday cake or family celebration cake because it’s that good. But it always bugged me a little that it wasn’t as nutritious as it could be so earlier this week I set out to make the same cake using wholesome substitutions such as ground almonds, brown rice flour and melted coconut oil all topped off with a refined-sugar-free cream cheese icing. The result…an even more delicious cake than before! Slices of cake were flying out the door and I just enjoyed the last piece about 30 minutes ago sitting in the sun with Hank eagerly watching my progress. Even four days after it was made, it was still moist, full of flavour and absolutely mouth-watering.

Give this super easy carrot cake a go, hopefully you’ll love it as much as we do and it will become a favourite in your household too. Even non-gluten-free folk will love it!

Serves 10-12

3 free-range eggs (preferably organic)
1 cup low-GI raw organic brown sugar (or you can use regular brown sugar)
½ cup coconut oil, melted
1 cup brown rice flour
½ tsp each of baking soda, ginger and cinnamon
½ cup ground almonds
Dash of vanilla powder
2 cups carrot, grated (I used two medium carrots)
225g crushed pineapple in juice, drained (reserve the juice)
2 Tbspn coconut chips or desiccated coconut
¾ cup walnuts, roughly chopped, plus extra for decorating

Cream Cheese Icing

~150g full fat cream cheese
25g butter, softened
2-3 Tbspn pure maple syrup
Juice of half a lemon

Preheat oven to 180°C. Line a cake tin with baking paper.
Beat the eggs and sugar with an electric beater until pale and thick (about 5 minutes). Slowly pour in the melted coconut oil, beating continuously as you go.
Sift over the brown rice flour, baking soda and spices. Add the ground almonds and vanilla powder and fold everything in. Add the carrots, pineapple, coconut and walnuts and gently fold everything together.
Pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin and bake for 40-45 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Once cooked, take the cake out of the oven and prick a few holes into the top of the cake using a skewer or a fork. Spoon over some of the reserved pineapple juice (I used about 2 Tbspn of juice in total).
Leave the cake to cool in the tin for about 30 minutes and then turn out the cake onto a wire rack to cool completely.
To make the icing, beat all of the ingredients together in a medium sized bowl until combined (I just used a spoon for this and some arm power!). Taste the mixture and adjust with extra lemon juice or maple syrup if required.
When the cake is completely cool, spread a generous layer of icing over the cake using a spoon and then top it off with some extra walnuts and a sprinkling of vanilla powder if you like.