Keto Carrot Cake with Almond Flour

This Keto Carrot Cake has a moist cinnamon crumb filled with carrots, crunchy pecans, and a sweet cream cheese frosting. Nobody can resist or guess this is a keto low-carb carrot cake! You will love sharing this celebration keto cake with your friends.

Before sharing this lovely almond flour carrot cake recipe, let’s answer your main questions. You might think that carrots are high in carbs and high in sugar, and they shouldn’t be included in a keto diet as a keto-friendly vegetable. You are (partially) right! Eating too many carrots can raise your carb count and your sugar level.

Eating one cup of raw carrots as part of a meal will blow your daily macros, adding 7.9 grams of net carbs to your day. But here we are, not talking about eating that many carrots at once! It’s totally fine to use carrots sparingly for texture and flavor in keto baking recipes.

Let’s do the math. If you spread 1 ½ cups of carrots into a 16-slice cake, the net carbs per slice from the carrots is only 0.74 grams! The most important thing about a keto diet is to keep your macros under control.

It’s not about putting labels on food. Saying what’s keto and what isn’t. It’s all about the balance. Keeping your total daily net carbs, fat, and protein under control and keeping your body in fat-burning mode – ketosis.

So, yes, you can eat a piece of this keto-friendly carrot cake. It’s full of good fats from keto flour and has no sugar added using keto-friendly sweeteners. One slice gives you 4.1 grams of net carbs.

Ingredients and Substitutions

All you need to make this cake are:

• Almond Flour – use ultra-fine almond flour and avoid using almond meal. In fact, almond meal is coarse and adds a grainy texture to keto cake recipes, so I don’t recommend it. Read more about choosing your keto-friendly flours.
• Coconut Flour – you need a balance of both flour to achieve the best keto carrot cake texture. If you want to use only almond flour, you may have to use 4 times more almond flour to replace the recipe’s coconut flour.
• Erythritol – or any keto crystal sweetener of choice to naturally sweetened the cake batter. Learn how to convert keto sweeteners.
• Unsalted Butter – yes, it’s keto-friendly!
• Large Eggs at room temperature
• Vanilla Extract – for flavor.
• Shredded Carrots – peel the carrots, trim the ends, and shred in a food processor using the smaller attachment.
• Almond Milk – Or any other unsweetened plant-based milk.
• Baking Powder – To make the crumb light and fluffy.
• Nutmeg, Ginger, Cinnamon – For classic carrot cake flavors.
• Pecans and Walnuts – To add crunchy bits.

The keto cake frosting ingredients you need are:

• Softened Cream Cheese – read why it is keto-friendly.
• Powdered Sugar-Free Sweetener – I used powdered erythritol.
• Vanilla Extract
• Softened Unsalted Butter

How To Make Keto Carrot Cake

This gluten-free low-carb carrot cake contains quite a few ingredients, and it’s easy to miss one if you don’t prepare yourself well.

1. First, gather all your ingredients into small bowls and measure each of them precisely.
2. One hour before making this keto carrot cake, bring the ingredients out of the fridge to make sure your eggs, butter, and cream cheese are at the same temperature.
3. One hour is short enough to be on the safe side. No bacteria will grow in that time!
4. Next, grease two 9-inch round pans with coconut oil. Line a piece of parchment paper at the bottom of each pan and grease again. I highly recommend double-greasing your cake pans for keto cake recipes to prevent the batter from sticking to the mold.
5. Also, prepare an electric beater and two large mixing bowls—one for the cake batter and one for the keto carrot cake cream cheese frosting.

1. Now, measure all the ingredients below into individual bowls or containers.
2. On another area of your kitchen countertop, measure all the cream cheese frosting ingredients. It is totally fine to measure these ingredients later in the recipe, for example, when the cakes are baked.
3. It takes about 1 hour for the cakes to cool down, giving the frosting ingredients time to soften and be at room temperature when you need to make the frosting.
4. Don’t remove dairy ingredients from the fridge for more than 2 hours before using them in a recipe to avoid bacteria contamination.
5. First, beat the eggs, melted butter, erythritol, unsweetened almond milk, and vanilla extract. Ensure that the ingredients are roughly at the same temperature to avoid issues like hot melted butter cake ‘cooking’ the eggs and forming egg lumps.
6. In another bowl, combine all the dry ingredients: almond flour, coconut flour, baking powder, spices, and salt.
7. Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir to combine and form a smooth keto carrot cake batter.
8. Finally, stir in the shredded carrots and half of the finely chopped nuts.
9. Now, divide the batter evenly into the two 9-inch round cake pans.
10. Oil and cover the cake pans with parchment paper to prevent the cake batter from sticking to them.
11. You will roughly fill each cake pan with 2 cups of cake batter. Then, bang each cake pan onto the kitchen countertop a few times to remove any trapped air bubbles.
12. Bake both layers at the same time in two cake pans. This is my favorite option to create two cake layers of the same thickness. This works only if your oven temperature is well calibrated and you can fit two 9-inch cake pans in the center rack of your oven. If so, place both cake pans in the oven’s center rack, preheated to 350°F (180°C). Bake until a pick inserted in each cake comes out clean. If you work on fan-forced mode, both cakes will bake at the same speed. For regular mode, the cake in the front may need a few more minutes to set in the center.
13. You can also bake the layers separately. Use this option if your oven is too small to fit two pans on the same rack or if your oven temperature calibration is not perfect. This is the case for most ovens that are roughly more than 8-10 years old or for toaster ovens! For this option, you will fill both cake pans evenly with the keto cake batter. Then, bake the first cake layer in the center rack of the oven, keeping the other filled cake pan at room temperature. When the first layer is baked, remove it from the oven and cool it down on a rack. Immediately place the second cake pan in the same oven spot, and bake for the same time until baked through.

Making the Frosting

1. First, place each baked carrot cake into a cooling rack and cool completely – it takes about an hour.
2. Meanwhile, prepare the keto cream cheese frosting.
3. In a large mixing bowl, add softened cream cheese, heavy cream, and vanilla extract.
4. Beat with an electric beater at high speed for 1 minute until the cream cheese is soft and fluffy.
5. Then, stop the beater, and add softened butter and powdered sweetener.
6. Finally, beat again until the frosting is smooth and fluffy. You can add more heavy cream if your frosting is too thick for your liking.
7. Place the first cake layer onto a turning table or serving plate and spread half of the keto frosting.
8. Then, place the second cake layer on top of it and add the remaining frosting. Spread all over the top and sides of the cake.
9. Finally, decorate the top of the keto carrot cake with the remaining chopped pecans and walnuts.

Storage Instructions

This is a large keto cake, serving 12 slices. Luckily, it stores for up to 4 days in a cake box in the fridge or up to 3 months in the freezer. If you freeze your keto carrot cake, make sure it’s in a sealed box to avoid contact with air.

Then, thaw the cake the day before eating it in the fridge. If you prefer a single-serve keto carrot cake recipe, try my keto carrot cake muffins instead.

Allergy Swaps

Even if the amount of shredded carrots is very low in this recipe to keep the total net carbs low, you may want a lower-carb option.

In this case, swap the shredded carrots with shredded zucchinis. Zucchinis release way more water into the cake batter, so before adding them, make sure you:

• Squeeze the grated zucchinis in a clean kitchen towel
• Discard the zucchini juice
• Measure in a measuring cup to avoid adding too much – this will make the cake batter too moist.

Frequently Asked Questions

More Keto Cake Recipes

I love creating keto low-carb dessert recipes to fix my sweet tooth on my keto journey. Below I listed my other keto cake recipes for you to try and share with family and friends: