You may think creating an almond flour cake just results in a trash little cake that is dry, grainy, and flat. Well this recipe is here to prove you wrong my friend! This almond flour carrot cake is so perfect and moist and you'd never be able to tell that it wasn't a traditional (slightly healthier) carrot cake with cream cheese frosting of course. The key to a good almond flour cake is perfecting your rising agent. So let's make a cake!

Almond Flour Cake Recipes

Almond flour can result in some really dense and sunken cakes because it holds more moisture than regular flour and therefore is heavier. It weighs the cake down versus allowing it to fluff up.

Here's how to solve this:

• Use a bit of coconut flour to absorb some of the moisture.
• Use TWO rising methods instead of just one.
• Eggs are going to help keep the cake from getting crumbly.
• Don't add oils which will weigh it down with even more moisture locked in than you need; you're cake will be super dense.
• Don't waste time- you need to mix this up and immediately get it into the oven quickly. The rise starts to happen as soon as all the ingredients come together in the batter. You want most of that rise to happen in the heat in the oven.

The two rising methods that we use in this almond flour cake recipe also give it a boost of flavor- Baking soda + a homemade buttermilk, and Baking powder.

Baking soda on it's own doesn't do much rising in your baking. It needs an acid to start the reaction which forms those nice little bubbles. (like those homemade volcanoes from school) This recipe uses baking soda and super easy Apple Cider Vinegar buttermilk. The vinegar is the really important part and the milk just gives more flavor. You can use almond milk or even oat milk instead of whole milk to make this recipe dairy free. If you don't have ACV (apple cider vinegar) you can use a regular white vinegar instead or even substitute lemon juice. We used ACV for the sort of apple spiced flavor (but also we had it on hand).

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Baking powder was invented over a hundred years ago to give home bakers an easier way to make fluffy risen cakes without using yeast. Pretty self explanatory there.

How does almond flour affect baking?

So we've already talked about the moisture that almond flour adds to cakes and the rising agents needed to go with that. Almond flour cake also has an added element of sweetness from the almond flour that regular flour does not have.

This is why we have less sugar in our almond flour carrot cake recipe than a normal cake recipe. That and the fact that the cream cheese frosting (or this coconut whipped cream for dairy free people) sweetens up the cake plenty on it's own!

Does Almond Flour take longer to bake?

Baked goods with almond flour definitely do better if you leave them to cool in the pan for about 20 minutes at least before removing. They can be more delicate because of the almond flour which is also why we use 4 eggs to basically glue the ingredients together. (eggs are baking glue)

It also helps a lot if you both grease the pan and use parchment paper. This just really helps when you remove the cake to make sure the middle section doesn't stick. When you are ready to remove the cake, you can just use a butter knife to gently separate the sides from the pan and then carefully flip out onto the counter like a regular cake. Tadahhhh!

Healthier Carrot Cake

Just because a dessert has a vegetable in it does not mean it's good for you. Do I care? Not at all. Carrot cake will always be one of my favorites and I don't care that it's generally not healthy. It's delicious and I will keep my tradition of eating carrot cake the night before my birthday (which is in the spring) and then ALSO eating it for breakfast the next day. There is nothing better than carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and a cup of coffee in the morning.

That being said, I also don't thing healthier has to taste worse. This almond flour carrot cake recipe is one of my favorite carrot cake recipes and yet has way less sugar in it than a regular carrot cake. Loads of sugar just isn't always necessary especially when you have sweetness coming from the almond flour and the carrots themselves.

Hope you enjoy this as much as we did!

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More Sweet recipes for you to love

• Classic Carrot Cake Cupcakes
• Almond Flour Almond Cookies
• Sweet Potato Blueberry Muffins
• Healthy Deviled Eggs
• Almond Flour Brownies