Carrot Cake with Dulce de Leche/Cream Cheese Frosting

This easy-to-make carrot cake is topped with equally easy-to-make dulce de leche/cream cheese frosting—and the results are so delicious. Recipe below.

I AM A CARROT CAKE LOVER, but my sole previous foray into baking one was, to be honest, a mess. I’m still not sure what I did wrong, probably every possible thing, and the whole fiasco put me off trying to bake carrot cake for quite a few years. Up until the other day when I stumbled on a recipe that nudged me into giving it another shot.

I was noodling around on the Saveur website and came across their carrot cake recipe, which, first, is baked in a 9×13 pan, not round pans (so no two layers to frost and fuss with), and, second, incorporates luscious dulce de leche in the frosting. I was so intrigued that I decided it was time to get over myself.

Dulce de leche is a sweet, thick sauce made with milk and sugar that is popular in Latin American cultures. Its name means candy made from milk. It can be used as frosting or filling for a cake or pastry, and a topping for ice cream. That word candy gives you a hint of how absolutely sweet it is. For the frosting here, we mixed it with cream cheese to dial down the sweetness and add a little tang. It brings a wonderful finish to the cake.

This cake is surprisingly easy to make. Even hand-grating the carrots is not onerous—I was expecting to spend 15 or 20 self-pitying minutes on the process and it took maybe three. I did cook the dulce de leche, since for some weird reason the main grocery in our primarily Mexican neighborhood was out of dulce de leche whaaaat?, and that process takes a long time (you can make it ahead), but is quite simple. And now we have extra dulce de leche for waffles or ice cream. The cake itself is moist, not overly sweet, and very satisfying. And it is made with oil, not butter, to assuage some of the guilt brought on by the decadent frosting.

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Carrot Cake with Dulce de Leche/Cream Cheese Frosting

This easy-to-make carrot cake is topped with equally easy-to-make dulce de leche/cream cheese frosting—and the results are so delicious.

Course Dessert

Servings 15 to 40 (see Kitchen Notes)

Ingredients

For the cake:

• 2-1/2 cups unbleached white flour
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1-1/2 tsp salt
• 1-1/2 cups white sugar
• 1-1/2 cups vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 4 large eggs
• 1 pound carrots, peeled and coarsely grated—should yield about 3 to 3-1/2 cups (see Kitchen Notes)
• 1 cup chopped toasted pecans or walnuts (optional, see Kitchen Notes)

For the frosting:

• 2/3 cup dulce de leche (see Kitchen Notes)
• 1 8- ounce package cream cheese
• 1/2 cup confectioners sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Instructions

• First, make the cake. If you intend to add nuts, toast them in the oven on a sheet pan at 350ºF for about six or seven minutes. Remove them, let them cool slightly and chop them, then scrape the chopped nuts into a bowl and set aside.
• Next, top and peel the carrots, then coarsely grate them by hand. Set them aside for now too.
• Put the flour, cinnamon, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl. Stir together with a fork.
• Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Prepare a 9x13 baking pan by greasing it with butter or oil.
• In a large bowl, whisk together the white sugar, brown sugar and oil, then, with a hand mixer, add in the eggs, one at a time, then the vanilla extract. Scrape down any stray bits with a stiff spatula or silicone scraper.
• When the mixture is nicely uniform, still using the hand mixer, add in the dry ingredients, working in batches and regularly scraping down the sides of the bowl. When the batter becomes uniform, immediately stir in the grated carrots and the nuts—do this part by hand with a wooden spoon or spatula.
• Spoon the batter into the prepared baking pan and slide it into the oven. Set a timer for 35 minutes. The cake is ready when a tester inserted near the center comes out clean and the cake is just starting to pull away from the sides of the pan. This may take anywhere from 35 to 55 minutes, which I know is a weirdly unspecific period of time—the outcome seems to depend on how moist the carrots are. Our cake took about 50 minutes. Remove the cake from the oven and set the pan on a rack. Don't frost it until it's completely cool. At this point, take the cream cheese out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature.
• Make the frosting. First, if you need to make your own dulce de leche (instructions in the Kitchen Notes), you can do that a day ahead. To make the frosting, put the cream cheese in a medium bowl and mix it, using a low setting on your hand mixer, until it is soft. If it gets all jammed up in the beaters, turn off the mixer and poke the cheese back into the bowl with a table knife or a slim spatula. Then add in the confectioners sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of salt and beat again on medium to incorporate. Finally, add the dulce de leche and beat again until everything is smooth and uniform. Spread the frosting on the cooled cake. That's it—you’re ready to serve, or cover it up and set it aside for later.

Kitchen Notes

Nuts to you. Most carrot cake recipes call for added walnuts, but for this version we used pecans. You may use other nuts, such as pistachios—just be sure to toast them first. You may also omit the nuts entirely—this will still be a total delight.

Rooting for carrots. Longtime readers will know that we love us a shortcut—there are more than a few recipes in here in which Lazy Marion is part of the title. But not this time. This recipe is best when you freshly grate the carrots by hand rather than using pre-grated store-bought.

Dulce de leche is available ready-made in Mexican groceries, packaged in jars of around 15 ounces or in cans of around 14 ounces, and may also be purchased from many online marketplaces. If you can't find it, you can make it yourself—the process is simple although time consuming. In a deep saucepan, immerse a can of sweetened condensed milk completely in water and bring the water to a boil. Simmer for 2-1/2 hours. Check the pot frequently and top up the water as needed to ensure that the can remains submerged—if it's exposed during the cooking process, it could explode. We kept a separate pot of water gently simmering so we could ladle from it to top up the main pot. After 2-1/2 hours, remove the can from the water using tongs and set it on a rack to completely cool. You can make it a day ahead and leave it unrefrigerated in the unopened can.

How many servings? That suspiciously wide range of numbers comes from none other than Martha Stewart. Cut small pieces. You can always serve seconds.