Box carrot cake with baby food

The BEST Carrot Cake (Made with Baby Food)

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

The BEST Carrot Cake – recipe from Full Moon BBQ in Birmingham, AL. This cake is super moist and the cream cheese frosting is to-die-for! I don’t even like carrot cake and I ate a HUGE slice of this cake! The secret ingredient in this cake is baby food. I know it sounds weird but it adds so much moisture and you don’t have any chunks of carrots in the cake. Flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, vanilla, eggs, oil, baby food, cream cheese, butter, and powdered sugar. Can make the cake up to a week in advance. This is PERFECT for the holidays!

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Full Moon BBQ Carrot Cake Recipe

This recipe is from Full Moon BBQ in Birmingham, AL. Their carrot cake is the BEST. They published the recipe many many years ago in the paper and a friend recently sent me a copy. Woohoo! I immediately made the cake, and it did not disappoint. It is honestly the BEST carrot cake I’ve ever eaten. The cake is super moist and the cream cheese frosting is to-die-for!

How to Make Carrot Cake with Baby Food

The secret ingredient in this cake is baby food. I know it sounds weird but it adds so much moisture and you don’t have any chunks of carrots in the cake. To make the cake from scratch, combine flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, vanilla, eggs, oil, and baby food. Mix well with a hand-held mixer and pour into three cake pans and bake. While the cakes are cooling, make the cream cheese frosting. Combine softened cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla. Mix with a hand-held mixer until light and fluffy. Once the cakes are cooled, frost them with the frosting and coat the cake with chopped pecans, if desired.

Tips & Frequently Asked Questions

I used Gerber 2nd Foods Carrot Baby Food. The original recipe used Gerber Stage 3 Carrots. They discontinued that product, so I went with the 2nd Foods.
I made this cake in three 8-inch cake pans. The cakes can be baked in any pan you wish, you will just have to adjust the cooking times.
You can make the cakes in advance and store them in an air-tight container overnight before frosting.
The baked cake layers can be frozen for later. When ready to frost the cake, thaw the cake layers and add the frosting.
Can carrot cake be frozen? Yes! You can freeze the frosted cake for later. Remove the cake from the freezer and let thaw on the countertop at least an hour before serving. The cake will keep 2 to 3 months in the freezer.
Can I personalize the cake? Sure! You can add nuts, golden raisins, or sweetened coconut to the batter. Also, feel free to add some orange extract or zest to the cream cheese frosting.
I coated the whole cake with chopped pecans. This is completely optional. You can coat just the top, just the sides, or none of the cake.
Store the frosted cake in the refrigerator. I take the cake out about 30 minutes to an hour before serving.
Leftover carrot cake will keep 2 to 3 days in an air-tight container in the refrigerator.
A decorated and uncut cake will keep up to a week in an air-tight container in the refrigerator.

Easy Dessert for the Holidays

This cake is a real show stopper. The three layers look so impressive when you cut into the cake. Not only is this cake impressive, but it is also DELICIOUS! I am not a big fan of carrot cake, but I can eat a giant piece of this cake! Make sure you have lots of friends to share this cake with, otherwise you might eat the whole thing yourself!

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Recipe

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The BEST Carrot Cake

Author: Plain Chicken

Yield: 12 people

Prep Time 10 mins

Cook Time 30 mins

Total Time 40 mins

The BEST Carrot Cake EVER! This cake is super moist and the cream cheese frosting is to-die-for! I don't even like carrot cake and I ate a HUGE slice of this cake! The secret ingredient in this cake is baby food. I know it sounds weird but it adds so much moisture and you don't have any chunks of carrots in the cake. Flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, vanilla, eggs, oil, baby food, cream cheese, butter, and powdered sugar. Can make the cake up to a week in advance. This is PERFECT for the holidays!

8-inch Round Cake Pan
Hand Mixer
Kitchen-Aid Mixer

Cake

2½ cups all-purpose flour
2½ cups sugar
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla
4 eggs
1 cup vegetable or canola oil
3 (4-oz) jars carrot baby food (Gerber Stage 2)

Frosting

1 (8-oz) package cream cheese room temperature
1 stick butter room temperature
2 tsp vanilla
4 cups powdered sugar
chopped pecans for garinish

Cake

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Grease and flour three 8-inch round cake pans.
In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients for the cake. Mix well with a hand-held mixer. Divide the batter into the prepared cake pan.
Bake 30 to 35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.
Allow cakes to cool for 5 minutes in the pans and then remove from pans and cool completely.
Once the cakes have cooled, frost with Cream Cheese Frosting. Garnish cake with chopped pecans, if desired.

Frosting

In a bowl, combine cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla.
Mix with a hand-held mixer until light and fluffy.

I used Gerber 2nd Foods Carrot Baby Food. The original recipe used Gerber Stage 3 Carrots. They discontinued that product, so I went with the 2nd Foods.
I made this cake in three 8-inch cake pans. The cakes can be baked in any pan you wish, you will just have to adjust the cooking times.
You can make the cakes in advance and store them in an air-tight container overnight before frosting.
The baked cake layers can be frozen for later. When ready to frost the cake, thaw the cake layers and add the frosting.
You can freeze the frosted cake for later. Remove the cake from the freezer and let thaw on the countertop at least an hour before serving. The cake will keep 2 to 3 months in the freezer.
You can add nuts, golden raisins, or sweetened coconut to the batter. Also, feel free to add some orange extract or zest to the cream cheese frosting.
I coated the whole cake with chopped pecans. This is completely optional. You can coat just the top, just the sides, or none of the cake.
Store the frosted cake in the refrigerator. I take the cake out about 30 minutes to an hour before serving.
Leftover carrot cake will keep 2 to 3 days in an air-tight container in the refrigerator.
A decorated and uncut cake will keep up to a week in an air-tight container in the refrigerator.

Did you make this recipe?Mention @plainchicken or tag #plainchicken!

Steph

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Baby Food Carrot Cake With Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe

Diana Rattray

Southern-cuisine expert and cookbook author Diana Rattray has created more than 5,000 recipes and articles in her 20 years as a food writer.

Learn about The Spruce Eats' Editorial Process

Updated on 11/17/21

BRETT STEVENS / Getty Images

This may have never occurred to you before, but baby food makes for a great secret ingredient in cake, especially in this carrot cake. Half the struggle with making carrot cake is all that grating of carrots. But using jars of baby food instead of grated carrots makes this recipe super easy to prepare and bake—it's a bit of genius. Plus, it tastes great, with lots of pronounced carrot flavor.

The recipe calls for carrot baby food, or a combination of carrot, apricot, and apple baby food. You can also use pears, too. Feel free to play with the balance of ingredients if you want to use the natural sweetness of fruit purees.

Note: This cake recipe is NOT meant for babies. Baby food is simply an ingredient.

3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 junior-size jars baby food carrots, or 1 small jar each of carrots, applesauce, and apricots

For the Frosting:

2 tablespoons margarine, or unsalted butter, softened
3 ounces cream cheese, softened
2 cups confectioners' sugar
2 teaspoons milk, or more as needed

Heat the oven to 350 F. Grease and flour a 13 x 9 x 2-inch baking pan.
In a medium bowl, mix eggs, sugar, and oil together until well blended.
Add the dry ingredients and vanilla extract and beat until just blended.
Fold in the baby food.
Pour the mixture into the prepared baking pan.
Bake for 40 to 45 minutes until a cake tester comes out with a few moist crumbs.

In a bowl of a stand mixer or using a hand mixer, cream together the margarine (or butter) and cream cheese at medium speed.
On low speed, add the confectioners' sugar and the milk.
Mix until smooth and creamy. Add more milk as needed to create a spreadable frosting.

Variations

Carrot cake is also delicious with some of the following optional ingredients:

1/2 cup chopped toasted walnuts or pecans folded into the batter, or 1 cup walnut or pecan halves used for garnish on top of the cake
1/2 cup to 3/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut sprinkled on top of the frosted cake
1/2 cup raisins folded into the batter
1 small can of crushed pineapple in its juices
Additional spices such as ginger, cloves, allspice and/or nutmeg

How to Store and Freeze Baby Food Carrot Cake

This cake will keep, covered, at room temperature for 3 to 5 days. You can refrigerate it if desired, but it may dry out a little bit.

Carrot cake will freeze well if wrapped (try it in individual slices) in foil and placed in a zip-close freezer bag. Defrost at room temperature or in the refrigerator. Cake will keep for up to 6 months, but the sooner you consume it, the better.

Crunch Into Spring With These Carrot Recipes

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Carrot cake children's recipe with photo

04/22/2013

For your child's little friends and girlfriends, treats should be on top.

The baby has a birthday, and this is serious and exciting for him, because little friends and girlfriends will come to him! You have to be on top, and so that everything is on the highest score - tasty, bright, elegant and festive. Therefore, we will make a delicious and almost harmless children's cake for them. To do this, take carrots and sour cream - a great start, isn't it? Continue...

For a small mold 20x15. Cooking time - about an hour + overnight in the refrigerator to soak.

Ingredients

for the cakes:

carrots - 2 medium
butter - 50 grams
egg - 2
lemon - half
sugar - 100 grams
flour - 120 grams
baking powder - 1/4 teaspoon

for cream:

sour cream - 3 tbsp. spoons
Mascarpone - 3 tbsp. spoons
Philadelphia - 1 tbsp. spoon

Cooking

Large photos

Small photos

Peel carrots, wash thoroughly and grind in a blender.
And a lemon: from half a lemon, carefully, without the white part, remove the zest and squeeze out the juice.
Whisk the eggs into a bowl, add the sugar and beat a little. Add chopped carrots, stir. Add oil and mix well again.
Pour in the lemon juice and add the zest.
Add the baking powder to the flour and put it all into a bowl. Stir.
Butter a baking dish and then dust it with flour.
Pour out the batter. Put in the oven, heated to t 170 degrees, and cook for about half an hour.
The finished dough is slightly damp due to carrots, so don't dry it out. Take the pan out of the oven, cover it with a towel and let it cool down.
Make a cream by placing the sour cream, mascarpone and Philadelphia in a bowl and mixing until smooth.
Cut the cooled cake into two parts, grease with cream and connect. Lubricate the top as well. As a decoration, multi-colored candied fruits are perfect.
Put the cake in the refrigerator overnight, it will soak and become very tender. Cut into small pieces that will be easy for a child to take with a pen, and serve with milk.

Note

Before chopping carrots, taste them - only sweet and juicy ones are suitable for a cake.
There is no sugar in the cream, as the cake is quite sweet. But you can divide the total amount of sugar into cake and cream.
Soft butter should be added to the dough. If you forgot to get it, then soften it in a water bath or in the microwave, and then add it to the dough.
The presence of lemon slightly drowns out the taste and aroma of carrots, because not all children love them. In addition to lemon, orange is also great.
Cream can be made from sour cream alone or sour cream with sugar. Then you get a carrot cake with sour cream. Only sour cream should be thick.

Carrot Flour and flour products

What else to cook?

90,000 carrot cake, step -by -step recipe for 8547 kcal, photo, ingredients

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DESCRIPTION

Updated recipe. The most delicious carrot cake I have ever tasted. Initially, it was still a pie, but look, can a pie have such a cut?? just cake and period!

Having carefully studied what the Internet and books on this topic offer us, I experimented a little .... and the result pleased me very much! The biscuit turns out to be completely unimaginable due to . .. salted nuts !!
I came across this idea in several sources...
somewhere it was suggested to fry, somewhere to bake nuts, but be sure to mix with butter and salt after that ... This is a crazy combination of sweet and salty !! Now this cake is one of my favorites! and a few words about the cream. Cream is traditionally made very sweet. To be honest, I feel sick at the sight of 400 or 500 g of powdered sugar (and this is only in cream), so I decided to replace half of the cream cheese with mascarpone, it turned out to be perfect in taste and not so sugary sweet!

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14%

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Ingredients for

Portations

for biscuit

Chicken

4 SPs.

oranges

1 pc.

walnuts

200 g

3 923003 l.

butter (for nuts)

salt (for nuts)

½ tsp.

For cream

Philadelphia cheese

200 g

Let's do the biscuit. The ingredients are mixed like muffins, i.e. liquid and dry separately are first mixed, then everything is combined and not kneaded for a long time. In different bowls, combine dry (flour, baking powder, cinnamon, sugar and zest) and liquid (eggs, butter, orange juice) ingredients.

Then carefully combine them, add grated carrots (or chopped in a blender)

Chopped nuts.

And mix gently.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. I made in three forms (size 18), it took me 25 minutes to bake them. You can bake in one form, then increase the time to 50 minutes or more (we follow and check for readiness with a toothpick). I wanted to get exactly three cakes. You can cut into 2 or 4! Let cool completely. To do this, you can put it in the freezer for an hour.

Now the cream, it's delicious!! Again, a combination of salty and sweet! Beat soft butter until fluffy. And add in several steps cream cheese, mascarpone and powder. Mix everything with a whisk (not a mixer) until smooth. We adjust the powder to taste ourselves, this composition is ideal for me! And remember that Philadelphia and Mascarpone should be at room temperature.

Let's start assembling the cake. Lubricate each cake generously with cream and put them on top of each other lightly pressing. Cover with cream and decorate as desired.

I wanted to make such a fashionable sloppy cake, so I decorated it quite simply! This cake is very easy to make, but it turns out very tasty and beautiful!!

And if you want something more quirky, welcome.