Step 6: Prepare the Cream Cheese Frosting. While the cake is cooling down, make the frosting. Combine softened butter and cream cheese in the bowl of the electric mixer and for 3-4 minutes on medium-high speed. Scrape sides and bottom of the bowl and add powdered sugar and vanilla extract. Starting on low speed and then gradually bringing it up to medium-high, beat for another 3-4 minutes.
Step 7: Frost the cake. First you want to even out the cake. Use a long serrated knife to even the bottom of top layer and the top of the bottom layer by off a very thin layer (1). (KEEP the dome that you sliced off and crumble it to use for decorating the cake.)
Frost the bottom cake layer on top (2), spread another 1/2 cup of chipped pecans if you wish, and stack the second layer on top. Then frost the second layer and the sides (3). Use the cake crumbs to decorate the sides (4) and you can spread a few more pecans on top.
Tips For The Best Carrot Cake:
3 cups of finely grated carrots packed in a cup is about 1 pound of unpeeled carrots. Use a fine grater side of the box grater to finely grate carrots.
Nuts can be an optional ingredient depending on personal taste. If you wish, add a cup of chopped walnuts or pecans to the batter and use some more nuts to decorate outside of the cake. I like to add some nuts to the frosting in the middle of the cake as well.
It’s always best to use a scale when dividing the batter among baking pans. Making sure that the batter is divided evenly among the baking pans will ensure that both layers are cooked the same.
Make the frosting fresh, right before frosting the cake. Cold frosting will be too hard to spread on the cake. Make sure the cake is completely cooled before frosting!
When cutting off the raised dome of the cake layer to make it even, make sure to SAVE the pieces that you cut off. Crumble those pieces and use it to decorate the outside of the frosted cake.
Ingredients
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