Easy, Moist and Healthy Wheat Flour Carrot Cake

Carrot cake is probably one of the most talked about cakes – internet is flooded with its pictures, recipes and reviews. I have heard about this cake so much that it is only obvious that I would want to bake it myself.

I liked the idea of having carrots inside the cake – you wouldn’t expect vegetables inside a cake! But carrots are different, they are often sweet and that makes them almost like fruits.

This cake recipe is healthy because it has carrots (duh!) and because it uses whole wheat flour. Though I use wheat flour daily to make chapati (Indian flat bread), I always thought that baking means only all-purpose flour. Wheat flour in baking seemed like an unlikely combination. But then just for experimenting, I tried using wheat flour in pizza dough. It turned out even better than all-purpose flour. Since then, I have started incorporating wheat flour in most of my baking recipes.

When you use whole wheat flour for baking, you have to ensure that is grounded really well. It is extremely fine and feels smooth between your fingers.

Two other important ingredients of carrot cake are cinnamon and nutmeg. Whenever I put these two spices in a recipe, my kitchen is filled with this great aroma and I feel like it’s November again – like it is the Holidays and I am drinking pumpkin-spice latte watching the snow fall on my patio. Warmth fills within me and I long for those Chicago winters. Does that happen to you too?

Whole Wheat Flour Carrot Cake

Serving Size

What Would You Need

1 1/4 cup + additional 1 tbsp Whole Wheat Flour

1 1/2 cup shredded Carrots

1/2 cup Sugar

1/4 cup Brown Sugar

2 tsp Cinnamon

1/4 tsp Nutmeg

1 tsp Baking Soda

1/2 tsp Salt

3/4 cup Vegetable Oil

1 tsp grated Orange Zest

2 Eggs

1 tbsp Vanilla extract

1/2 cup plumped up Raisins (see here for a quick to plump up or rehydrate raisins)

How to Go About It

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (or 180 degrees C).

In a bowl, take the shredded carrots and the additional 1 tbsp flour and toss them together. Coating carrots with the flour ensure that they do not sink to the base of the batter as it cooks in the oven.

Now mix all the dry ingredients (flour, shredded carrots coated with flour, sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, salt) together in a bowl. Mix all the wet ingredients (vegetable oil, eggs, orange zest, vanilla extract) in a separate bowl.

Mix everything together. Make sure that carrots and raisins are well incorporated into the batter. The batter of this cake is going to be thicker than other cakes, therefore, I use a fork instead of a whisk to mix it together.

Set the batter aside for a few minutes.

Meanwhile prepare your baking pan by lining it with aluminium foil. If you oil and dust you pan for baking, you can do that. If you use parchment paper instead, you can do that too. I cover my baking pan with aluminium foil and then lightly grease the foil.

Pour the batter in the prepared pan (and awe at how amazing it looks already).

Bake the batter for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, take it out and perform the toothpick test – insert a toothpick in the center of the cake and see if it comes out clean. In case it doesn’t come out clean, bake for another 5 minutes.

I loved this rich brown color that wheat flour has given to the cake.

Let the cake cool in the pan for a few minutes. After that take it out of the pan and let it cool on a wire rack.

The carrot cake is traditionally served with cream cheese frosting. I had fondant in my fridge from a project earlier. So I decided to use that instead.