Please welcome into your life: Carrot Cake Coffee Cake.
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Absolutely delicious and surprisingly easy to make. Definitely great for family get togethers otherwise you will eat the whole pan.
Emily
This recipe is a fan favorite for spring and was originally published in 2021. It is also part of this year’s Spring Bucket List! Find out more about the bucket list here.
I know it might be confusing – carrot cake, which is like vegetables meets cake, but also still cake, combined with coffee cake, which is also cake but the kind you can eat for breakfast and it will still be totally appropriate and, obviously, cakey?
But no need to be confused.
If you like a carrot cake that tastes just slightly cinnamony and teeters perfectly between springy and dense…
And you like a coffee cake that is loaded with a mega amount of streusel topping…
And you like cakes that look beautiful and taste even more beautiful with a proper shmear of honey butter…
HELLO! Meet your one true match. This one is for you.
In This Post: Everything You Need For Carrot Cake Coffee Cake
- Watch How to Make Carrot Cake Coffee Cake
- Ingredients for Carrot Cake Coffee Cake
- Make Carrot Cake Coffee Cake
- Carrot Cake Coffee Cake: Frequently Asked Questions
Prefer To Watch Instead Of Read?
Ingredients You’ll Need To Make This Spring Treat
This is different than a classic carrot cake recipe because of the incredible crumb topping that YOU NEED, but we have a pretty standard baking lineup ahead.
For the cake:
- carrots
- sugar
- butter
- eggs
- all-purpose flour
- baking soda
- cinnamon
- salt
For the streusel topping:
- more butter (yum!!)
- flour
- brown sugar
- cinnamon
- salt
Let’s Make Carrot Cake Coffee Cake
Here’s how we make it (IT’S VERY EASY).
- Pulse the carrots in a food processor. I hate grating things, especially carrots. I’m not even sorry. Put me on the record. I said it. So, I am not going to make you grate anything! Just run your peeled carrots through the food processor, and if you don’t have a food processor, what are you even doing? You need this post.
- Make your batter. Grab a large bowl and mix up a very simple batter with eggs, flour, sugar, cinnamon, and (wait for it) butter. BUTTER. Carrot cakes traditionally use vegetable oil. But newsflash: BUTTER IS DELICIOUS. So today we use butter. Obviously.
- Mix up your streusel layer. Bring all your streusel ingredients together in a small bowl and pulse things up until you get a pebble-like texture.
- Bake! Grease your pan or put some parchment paper in there. Now it gets baked under an aggressively thick layer of streusel. You can test the cake doneness by sticking a toothpick in the center. If the toothpick comes out clean, it’s good to go!
- Major YUM! Whatcha waiting for? Drizzle some honey butter on (or, like some readers have done, a layer of cream cheese frosting!) and let’s gooo!
And finally, THIS HAPPENS.
The crumbly topping is just barely crunchy, and the honey butter shmear gets melty-ish because it’s all still a little warm. You have a coffee in your other hand, and it might just be an excellent little afternoon spring hygge moment for you.
Carrot cake coffee cake! I’m telling ya.
Carrot Cake Coffee Cake: Frequently Asked Questions
I used a 9-inch round cake pan, but an 8 or 9-inch square or smaller rectangular baking dish would also work.
It’s super easy! See recipe notes for exact instructions.
Salted butter is best for this recipe!
We have not tested this recipe ourselves with a gluten-free flour alternative, but one reader used almond flour in place of it and said it worked well (however, they also reported that it did not bind together as well as regular flour). We’d probably recommend giving a 1:1 gluten-free flour a try instead as it will likely give you a closer result to the original!
Sure thing! We’d make this just a day ahead of time to make sure it’s still fresh and moist when you serve.
One reader subbed vegetable oil in the cake and coconut oil on the topping and said it worked great! We’d expect a vegan butter to also work well.
While we haven’t tested this with flax or chia eggs, one reader did make this recipe with chia eggs and said it turned out wonderfully!
Carrot Cake Coffee Cake
- Total Time: 55 minutes
- Yield: 8–10 servings 1x
Description
Carrot Cake Coffee Cake! A super easy batter loaded with shredded carrots, topped with a thick crumbly cinnamony streusel, and finished with a melty sweet honey butter.
Ingredients
Carrot Cake Coffee Cake:
- 2 large carrots
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup butter, melted
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- pinch of salt
Streusel Topping:
- 4 tablespoons butter, melted
- 1/2 cup flour
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- pinch of salt
Instructions
- Prep: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Peel and grate the carrots (I use my food processor). You should have about 1 1/2 cups.
- Cake Batter: Whisk sugar, melted butter, and eggs. Stir in carrots. Add flour, baking soda, and cinnamon. Mix until just combined. The batter will be very thick.
- Streusel: Mix ingredients for the streusel until you get a texture that looks like pebbles (sometimes I use my hands to mix it all together).
- Bake: Spread batter into a greased 9-inch round baking pan (see FAQs). Sprinkle with streusel. Bake for 30 minutes until the center is just set. Top with honey butter if you’re extra (you are).
Notes
Honey Butter: Mix 1/4 cup very soft butter with 1/4 cup honey. Spread or dollop on warm slices of carrot cake coffee cake and die and go to heaven.
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 35 minutes
- Category: Breakfast
- Method: Bake
- Cuisine: American
Keywords: carrot cake coffee cake, coffee cake, carrot cake
More Springtime Treat Recipes
- Healthy Carrot Muffins (a naturally sweetened, easy-to-make snack!)
- The Best Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting (this frosting is EVERYTHING!)
- Spring Lemon Blueberry Bread (lemon and blueberries: a perfect match!)
- Pistachio Loaf (spring baking essential! nutty, moist, dense, and so delicious)
- Lemon Poppyseed Zucchini Bread (an olive oil-based bread perfect for breakfast, snack, or dessert!)
One More Thing!
This recipe is part of our yummy carrot recipes page. Check it out!
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I love nuts and raisins in carrot cake. I’m wondering if you’ve ever added either or both to this carrot coffee cake recipe
Absolutely phenomenal.
This was pretty good! A little drier than I’d like but maybe I ended up with not quite enough carrot. I’d definitely do the honey butter next time. My husband who is picky about sweets ate one piece and then immediately went back for seconds.
Hi! Do you know roughly how many cups of shredded carrot? Wanting to use up baby carrots
Can you please give me an approximate weight or volume of carrots? ‘Large’ is somewhat vague.
Would this recipe work well with doing cupcakes instead of a whole cake? If so I would love any tips 🙂
Hi Jill! You might want to make our moist carrot cake cupcakes instead!
Would love to serve this to a crowd. Would I double for a 9×13 pan? Baking time?
Hi! 10×15 inch pan jelly roll pan → closest single-pan option (slightly thicker, but works well). You could use a 9×13, but it will be thicker and you would need to increase baking time.
Make this recipe IMMEDIATELY!!! It is so so so good and while you don’t need the honey butter, you NEED the honey butter (I’ve also made maple butter with it). Easily swaps to gluten free which is how I make it every time and it is still my mother in laws number one dessert request. Incredible.
I made this cake today. So very tasty and easy to make.
Thank you for this recipe!
I’ve made this so many times and it’s always a hit! To this recipe I also add a teaspoon of nutmeg. It’s perfection.
Last night tried making it using zucchini instead of carrots and it turned out great. It was more moist and needed to bake a little longer, but worked out well.
Thanks for sharing this yummy and easy recipe 🙂
This recipe is so good! I’ve made this several times and it is truly an elevated coffee cake-perfection!
The best carrot coffee cake recipe ever!!! Perfect bake time, ingredients, very moist, flavor, taste! Thank you so much for sharing, everyone loved it!!
I may have rated this already. I don’t care! This cake is worth ALLLLLL the five-star ratings! I made it again Friday afternoon – doubled it, in fact, and gave half away. Five tasters and five rave reviews. It’s just the right amount of everything – carrots, spice, tender cake and crunchy topping.
Made this with my son for Easter and it turned out amazing. He said it was the “best cake ever” and he wants to have it for breakfast every day! We used Gluten Free 1:1 flour and it turned out perfectly!
Oh great! Thank you for the note about the gluten-free flour!
Lindsay, I made this and loved it….my family did too. I used 1/2 whole wheat flour since I did not have the full amount of white flour and it was great. I could eat the streusel topping all by itself (and did sample it before placing on the cake). It was so easy – definitely a keeper!
Glad to hear it, Chris! And happy to know whole wheat flour works as well!
Have made this several times but instead of the carrots I sub in two smashed bananas. It’s delish!
love the recipes I have already tried and will do more
Super easy and super yummy! I will definitely be making this recipe often!
This did not work for me I think 1/4 butter or more flour….. and only 1/2 cup sugar would have been better as it had a wierd consistancy
It’s called a carrot coffee cake but no coffee in the ingredients?!
where is the coffee in your carrot coffee cake recipe?
Approximately how many grams in 2 large carrots?
Google says about 144 grams! 🙂
I love this recipe!!! It is simple and delicious, I highly recommend!!! P.S. you don’t have to put as much carrot as it calls for, I tend to do less 😉
Easy to make and absolutely delicious!
So good!