[Recipe] Reduced sugar carrot cake with cream cheese frosting

Baking has always been a passion of mine. I remember assisting my mom when I was small when she would bake orange butter cakes (a family favorite), extra thin pizza crusts (kneading them by hand was a lot of work), and sugar drop cookies (we would bake a huge batch of it during Christmastime and would give it away as gifts) just to name a few. Having caught the baking bug early on, I have continued dabbling with homemade bread and pastries most of my young adult life.

I have experimented with heat-stable sugar substitutes after being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes more than 15 years ago. Monk fruit is the latest sweetener that I have been trying to use with baking and I am liking it so far.

Do take note that the original recipe I was basing this on called for 2 cups of white sugar but with my previous experience using monk fruit sweetener, it has this odd characteristic of starting out as normal sweetness but the sweetness increases as you eat almost like the sweetness accumulates in your tongue if that makes sense. So I tend to reduce the amount by a lot. I used sucralose in the frosting since originally it called for confectioners sugar and I thought that Splenda is much finer in consistency (I also reduced the equivalent confectioners sugar amount a lot since I personally don't like frosting that's too sweet).

Reduced sugar carrot cake with cream cheese frosting

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Cake Ingredients:
4 big carrots (peeled then grated, yielded approximately 3 1/2 cups of grated carrots)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup pineapple tidbits (drained)
1/2 cup chopped nuts (I used toasted cashew nuts)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup monk fruit sweetener (or any heat-stable sweetener you prefer equivalent to half cup sugar)
1/4 coconut sap sugar (or brown sugar)
3 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt

For the cream cheese frosting:
4 oz. softened butter
8 oz. cream cheese
6 packets of sucralose (Splenda)

Directions:
In a large mixing bowl (or in my case I used a stand mixer) cream the oil with the sweetener and the coconut sap sugar, then beat in one egg at a time. Add the vanilla extract then mix well.

Sift the flour into a separate bowl and add the salt, baking soda, baking powder, and cinnamon.

Add this flour mixture gradually to the mixing bowl making sure to thoroughly mix in the flour with each addition.

Next, gradually fold into the batter the grated carrots making sure they are mixed thoroughly in the batter and you don't have clumps of grated carrots.

Lastly, fold in the pineapple tidbits and chopped nuts into the mixture.

Pour into cake pans and bake at 177 degrees C (or 350 degrees F) for 30 minutes or until a test toothpick comes out clean in the middle.

Let the cake cool and refrigerate in a closed airtight container.

Reduced sugar carrot cake straight from the oven

reduced sugar carrot cake sliced after cooling

For the frosting, just whip the softened butter, the sweetener, and cream cheese until well mixed and smooth.

Cut the cooled off cake into bars and add a layer of frosting on top. Let it cool in the refrigerator so that the frosting firms up.