The deliciously soft and tasty low carb, this best keto carrot cake recipe has just hit the number one spot on Google AND it's only 3.8g NET carbs.
The lovely recipe is so popular because it's so simple to make and it's sugar-free too. Plus, this keto carrot cake is gluten-free, grain-free, and topped off with the most delicious cream cheese frosting.
Don't want (or need) a whole cake? Quickly turn this keto carrot cake recipe into scrumptious cupcakes instead!
If you love carrot cake, you can have your sugar-free cake and eat it too! This is an almond flour recipe the entire family will enjoy. Make this special celebration cake for birthdays, Mother's Day, Easter, Christmas, or just a winter treat with coffee.
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Is carrot cake keto?
Regular carrot cake is not keto because it is often made with wheat flour, wholemeal flour, sugar, honey, dried dates, and often has a high sugar frosting on top.
The easy way to make a healthy keto carrot cake is to use low-carb baking alternatives such as almond flour and sugar replacements. Carrots are a root vegetable and are higher in carbs so fewer carrots can be eaten on a keto diet.
To make sure this keto carrot cake recipe falls within keto carb restrictions, fewer carrots are needed but the same warm spices and vanilla.
Nutrition information (per serving of one slice)
- Traditional carrot cake: 38 g net carbs, 3 g protein, 15 g fat, 290 calories.
- Sugar-free keto carrot cake: 3.8 g net carbs, 5.7 g protein, 31.6 g fat, 321 calories.
What a difference! Check out those net carbs - over 34 grams of net carbs saved in my keto carrot cake recipe!
Nutritional values from cronometer.com
Ingredients you need
All quantities, ingredients, and instructions are in the recipe card below.
Low Carb Carrot Cake
- Eggs - fresh medium eggs
- Butter - I used melted salted butter
- Sweetener - use your favourite sugar replacer and add more or less to your taste
- Vanilla essence - or vanilla extract
- Carrots - grated or shredded
- Walnuts - chopped
- Desiccated shredded coconut - always read the label to make sure your coconut is unsweetened and contains no added sugars
- Almond meal - blanched almond flour or ground almonds
- Ground cinnamon
- Mixed spice - or pumpkin pie spice
- Baking powder - do not be confused with baking soda
- Ground ginger - optional
Why develop a keto carrot cake recipe?
I once asked my Low-Carb and Keto For Beginners Group "who misses carrot cake when going low carb"?
I was overwhelmed by the response ... it was a resounding YES!!!
Luckily you don't need to miss out on carrot cake anymore because my low-carb carrot cake recipe is versatile and super easy.
It can be baked as a one or two-layer cake, muffins, cupcakes, or as a carrot loaf.
Which flour is best for keto carrot cake?
For this keto carrot cake recipe, I prefer to use either almond flour or almond meal. They are naturally low-carb flours and gluten-free flours.
They both work brilliantly. However, as with most natural and unprocessed low-carb and keto flours, they are not standardised and so will vary considerably from brand to brand, and even batch to batch.
So when making any low-carb baking, you will become accustomed to experimenting with possibly adding some additional low-carb flour to your batter to ensure it is the correct cake consistency.
Some almond flour/meal will absorb more liquids from your cake batter than others. Even how you store your almond flour/meal is important to prevent the flour from absorbing moisture from the air (and hence, less from your cake batter).
So if in doubt, add some additional almond flour to thicken your cake batter.
Can I use coconut flour?
You cannot directly substitute coconut flour for almond flour, these two low-carb flours behave completely differently.
Once you understand the difference between coconut flour vs almond flour you'll understand how to avoid expensive baking mistakes.
The cake tastes wonderful when made with almond flour, however, if you have a nut allergy, then there is a carrot cake with coconut flour version in my Lunchbox Cookbook.
I also have an entire index of coconut flour recipes. You'll find lots of tasty low-carb and keto recipes that are suitable for those of you with nut allergies or whose children attend a nut-free school.
How to make keto cream cheese frosting
This classic low-carb carrot cake with keto cream cheese frosting recipe is a fabulous treat with your morning coffee or as a low-carb dessert.
Top Tip: Always allow this healthy sugar-free carrot cake to completely cool on a wire rack before adding your keto cream cheese frosting (icing).
Keto carrot cake FAQ
I used an 8 inch / 20 cm round cake tin. Prepare the baking tin by greasing the bottom and the sides, or use baking parchment paper to link the cake tin.
Alternatively, you can use a silicon or springform loose bottom cake tin too.
Yes, you can use the same keto carrot cake batter to make carrot cake muffins, keto carrot cupcakes, and even a keto carrot loaf.
Just adjust the cooking times accordingly and ensure the cake batter is completely cooked into the centre of the cakes.
Yes, the sugar-free and keto frosting is made with full-fat cream cheese, melted butter, and your favourite sweetener (sugar replacement).
Powdered sweetener is best because it will make the frosting smooth and creamy, however, if you only have granulated sweetener then place it in your food processor or coffee grinder and pulse until you have powdered sweetener.
Always allow your gluten-free carrot cake to be completely cooled on a wire rack before frosting/icing otherwise the icing/frosting will melt and slide right off the cake rather than rest on top.
Brands of almond flour/meal vary considerably to how much liquid from the batter the flour/meal will absorb.
To prevent your cake from being too moist use additional almond flour/meal to ensure the correct cake batter consistency. I recommend adding 1 tablespoon at a time until you get that standard cake batter look.
I have never heard of anyone's cake batter is too dry, but if it does happen, you can slowly add 1 tablespoon of heavy cream at a time. This will help to keep the cake moist but do not add too much. No one wants a soggy cake.
Sometimes the butter is still melted and rises to the surface of the warm carrot cake. Always allow the cake to cool completely so it may have time to absorb any butter that may have rendered out during cooking.
You can shred/grate your carrots by hand or in your food processor with the shredding blade. Some carrots have more moisture than others, so before you measure them, give them a gentle squeeze over your sink and allow any excess water to be removed.
This helps to make a sturdy carrot cake. Scoop your shredded carrots into your measuring cup. Do not overpack or pres down otherwise you will add too much and the nutrition values for the cake will be too high.
Yes, you can store it in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 4 days and in the freezer for up to 3 months. Defrost on the counter at room temperature. You can freeze it undecorated or frosted.
Yes, omitting the frosting is the easiest way OR cutting smaller slices.
Without frosting: 3.8 g NET carbs, 5.7 g protein, 31.6 g fat, 321 calories
With frosting: 5.3 g NET carbs, 8.6 g protein, 35.1 g fat, 370 calories
I usually prefer to use prepared baking pans that have been sprayed with cooking spray or brushed with melted butter. I have baked this delicious cake in round cakes tins, a loaf tin, or cupcake cases.
If you want a healthy birthday cake, use two prepared baking pans then once the cakes are completely cool, add sugar-free cream cheese frosting between the two cake layers.
Does anyone else have a watering mouth yet? This easy keto carrot cake recipe is at the top of my favorite dessert list. It has all the flavour I crave, but none of the guilt or sluggish carbs.
Make one for yourself and see!
📖 Recipe
Please rate this recipe.
Keto Carrot Cake Recipe
Calculate ingredients
Ingredients
Low Carb Carrot Cake
- 5 eggs - medium
- 200 g (7 oz) butter melted
- 3 tablespoon granulated sweetener of choice or more, to your taste
- 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 200 g (2 cups) carrots grated/shredded
- 50 g (½ cup) walnut halves/pieces chopped, optional
- 50 g (½ cup) desiccated/shredded coconut unsweetened
- 150 g (1 ½ cups) almond meal/flour
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1-2 teaspoon (1 teaspoon) ground mixed spice
- 2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger (optional)
Cream Cheese Frosting (optional)
- 200 g (7 oz) cream cheese
- 1-2 tablespoon (1 tablespoon) granulated sweetener of choice or more, to your taste
Instructions
Low-Carb Carrot Cake
- Beat eggs, melted butter, sweetener, and vanilla together.
- Add grated/shredded carrot, walnuts, and coconut then mix almond meal/flour, spices and baking powder.
- Pour into a greased and lined tin. Bake at 180C/350F for 40-50 minutes or until a fork pushed in, comes out clean.
- Ensure your cake is completely cool before icing/frosting.
Cream Cheese Frosting (optional)
- Warm the cream cheese in the microwave for 20 seconds to soften it.
- Stir in 1-2 tablespoons of sweetener of choice until you get the level of sweetness you prefer.
- You could also add some lemon zest to give it more flavour. This would add a small number of carbs.
- Cover with cream cheese frosting.
Notes
- I used an 8 inch/ 20 cm cake tin.
- Always allow your cake to be completely cooled before frosting/icing your low-carb carrot cake
- Brands of almond flour/meal vary considerably to how much liquid from the batter the flour/meal will absorb. To prevent your cake from being too moist:
- you may need to use additional almond flour/meal to ensure correct cake batter consistency
- always allow the cake to cool completely so it may have time to absorb any butter that may have rendered out during cooking
- Nutrition values are for the cake only. Frosting/icing is optional.
Without frosting: 3.8 g NET carbs, 5.7 g protein, 31.6 g fat, 321 calories
With frosting: 5.3 g NET carbs, 8.6 g protein, 35.1 g fat, 370 calories
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Approximate nutrition information is provided for convenience and as a courtesy only. For the most accurate nutritional data, use the actual ingredients and brands you used in your preferred nutrition calculator.
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Chocolate cream cheese sugar-free frosting
Hannah
It’s ok , easy to make although I think it wasn’t sweet enough and I would add more carrots. Will do it again in the future.
KimberlyS
I made it for one of our Easter desserts. It had a beautiful texture and I liked it very much except for the sweetness. I think it needed much more sugar substitute for the cake part. I would put 6 oz of Monkfruit or something similar instead of just 3T. I would leave the amount you have for the cream cheese topping the same. Tks!
Lamar
My favorite Keto/Low carb carrot cake and plan on making it again for easter. Every year its a big hit with the family.
Lamar
Oh and I omit the coconut and it's still delicious.
Juanita Taylor
Your recipe appears to be 200 grams butter or 7 oz and when I convert that to tablespoons it's almost 2 full sticks, can that be true??
Libby www.ditchthecarbs.com
Yes, this recipe requires a lot of butter but it's quite forgiving so you can easily dial it down and the cake still turns out beautifully. Remember the recipe notes, that once cooked a lot of butter can some time render out, allow the cake to cool and the carrot cake will magically absorb the butter again to make it delicate and moist.
Julie
Made this for my mums birthday but unfortunately when i went to take it out of the tin it stuck to the bottom and it came flying out in pieces...a disaster! However it does taste yum! Just about cried..I think its cos it wasnt completely cooled off.
John G.
I made this cake today. I had a slice it met all my expectations. It was great. I altered the recipe a little. I substituted baking powder with a dollop of sour cream and 1/2 tsp of baking soda. And I didn't have the spice mix so I used a dash of pumpkin spice, a pinch of nutmeg, and a pinch of ginger. It came out perfect. Light and as tasty as I was hoping for. I did increase the sweetener to 1+ tbsp for both batter and frosting( plus 2 drops of cake batter extract and tbsp of vanilla in frosting).
Thanks for your recipe!
Kagi
Made this a couple of days ago, it’s the first time making a LCHF cake. It’s delicious and instructions are simple. add a teaspoon of orange zest to the frosting, yum. Great with a cup of coffee or tea. I cannot fault this recipe. I definitely recommend this and will be making it again in the future.
Libby www.ditchthecarbs.com
Hey thank-you Kagi, what a lovely review to read this morning. I am so pleased you loved this cake. You can also use the same cake batter to make a keto carrot loaf, keto carrto muffins and keto carrot cupcakes. Yummo!
Frederick Alexader
I agree with you
Gracie Blazevski
Can I substitute butter with olive oil?
Libby www.ditchthecarbs.com
I personally wouldn't. Butter has a creamy distinctive lovely creamy taste whereas olive oil can be quite sharp and fruity. You could perhaps try coconut oil if you cannot tolerate butter, but you may need to add additional flavour and spices plus an extra pinch of salt.
Nikki van der Merwe
I've made this recipe as a cake or as 12 cupcakes and it always works out beautifully! The texture is moist and you would never know that it was a low carb version of your favourite cake!
Ruth
Ok to freeze this cake please?
Libby www.ditchthecarbs.com
Yes, the cake may be frozen, in an airtight container. Either as a whole cake OR sliced, with baking parchment between each slice so you may remove 1 serving at a time.
Helen
This is a lovely cake. I do not understand the negative comments. If you follow the recipe exactly it turns out beautifully. The only adjustment I made was to the frosting, as I had a tub of mascarphone cheese to use up. I added a tbsp of erythritol, the juice and rind of a lemon and it made a very nice topping for the cake. Very glad I found this recipe.
Libby www.ditchthecarbs.com
Thank you Helen 🙂
Carmen
I love this recipe. Made it for the second time and all enjoyed EXCEPT my daughter who can taste 1 g of coconut in a 10 kg mix! Is it possible to substitute something for the coconut or just omit?
My oven goes from 175°c to 200°c. No 180°. So I bake at 175° for quite a bit longer. Any suggestions?
Thank you for a great recipe.
Libby www.ditchthecarbs.com
You could try to add more almond flour/meal and omit the coconut, but you would need to experiment with how much you add, as I haven't developed this particular recipe entirely with almond flour yet, but as a best guess/advice would be to add additional almond flour 2 tbsp at a time until you reach a cake batter thickness. I would also add, make sure you taste before baking to ensure there is enough sweetener and spices for your tastes. You may prefer it to be a bit more spicy or sweet than I have chosen, and by adding more spices and sweetener, might help mask the coconut flavour if you do decide to make it as per the recipe for your daughter. Let me know how you get on.
ashley
i see here you keep mentioninf coocnut flour . when in the recipe it is called for coconut flakes. i was going to ask the same question. so now im confused?
Libby www.ditchthecarbs.com
The recipe ingredients calls for shredded/desiccated coconut (unsweetened). My apologies, a previous reader wrote a comment about coconut and I wrongly assumed she was referring to coconut flour.
Marina
Delish! I mis-read the recipe and inadvertently used only 1/4 of the butter. I also added a small pot of unsweetened apple sauce, to stop my husband eating it ( he is following Slimmingworld and he absolutely hates apples. ). The lack of butter dd not seem to do any harm. I iced it with cream cheese combined with vanilla protein powder. Yum. Even my teenagers enjoyed it, and they usually avoid my "healthy" cakes like the plague!
Maree
I made this recipe last night and baked it as muffins to share on mothers day. After reading the reviews I choose to only add 150g of butter with the thought I could add in the last 50g once I checked the consistency of the batter. I did not use it in the end. I did not have mixed spice so added a mix of what I did have (cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger).
The recipe was easy to follow and my household carrot cake lovers LOVE the muffins. The icing was also a success.
Thanks for sharing.
Rob Crowe
Made this cake tonight. Needed 60 mins to cook, then left to cool. Turned out of pan and base was very soggy and very greasy. Tasted vaguely like carrot cake, but actually quite nasty. I didn't ask my flatmate to try it, as he always criticises my LCHF choices and he would say it proves he's right. I will not make this again unless I want to waste £5+ on eggs, almond flour, coconut and gas again.
Libby www.ditchthecarbs.com
As with all recipes here or on other sites ALWAYS taste before baking. You may require additional sweeteners or additional spices. Never ever throw baking away, just simply serve with sweetened whipped cream, and you can sprinkle some additional mixed spice/pumpkin spice over te cream too as a garnish/extra flavour. Yummo!
Justine
I made it as described, baked it in two round cake pans. It's very plain and boring, definitely far from any kind of carrot cake I've ever had. I hope some sweet icing will help but I'm not sure.
Libby www.ditchthecarbs.com
Did you add all the spices? The sweetener? The walnuts? I'm puzzled as to why you may think this cake is lacking in flavours. Let's see what went wrong. 🙂
Bec
Can you replace the butter with oil
June Howley
Totally agree with the lady above. Sooo disappointed and what a waste of good ingredients. Not sweet enough and maybe because I only had coconut flour (which I'm told can easily be a substitute) but texture was quite horrible too. It's final journey was the bin.
Libby www.ditchthecarbs.com
I'm sorry to hear this but I can see two things that went wrong here. ALWAYS taste before baking and adjust sweetener to YOUR sweet tooth (every recipe states this "or add more to your taste"), and the recipe was developed using almond meal/flour NOT coconut flour. You cannot substitute them, for numerous reasons which is why your cake turned out incorrectly and the texture was wrong, you made a coconut flour cake not an almond flour cake. You may wish to read my Ulitmate guide to sweeteners an my Ultimate guide to coconut flour vs almond flour. Please don't be discouraged, but you must follow the recipes using the flours they were developed using 🙂
Nicole
No way you can sub coconut flour for almond flour, very very different ingredients. You would need an entirely new recipe.
Iluminameluna
I'm thinking the folks who found it tasteless might have used unsalted butter and so didn't add salt.
I've baked a few sweet and savory breads in the last decade or so and if you bake with unsalted butter you MUST add the equivalent of 1/4 tsp of fine table salt per 1/4 pound (4oz, about 200g) of butter. Same with this recipe. If you don't, no matter the sweetness of the carrots, they won't add enough to compensate for all the other bland, though aromatic, ingredients.