It's everything you love about this classic and beloved cake but with an Italian twist! Our Italian Carrot Cake with Mascarpone Frosting is a moist, light cake with hazelnuts and a creamy frosting made with soft Italian cheese!
It's finally here! I have been working on this recipe for a long time now and, if I do say so myself, it is soooooooo good. Truly, if you are a carrot cake fan but want to try something a little different and a LOT delicious, then you have to give my Italian Carrot Cake with Mascarpone Frosting recipe a try! Even better, it can easily be made gluten-free and it has everything you want from this classic cake; a tender moist crumb, just the right amount of carrots, a little nutty crunch, and sweet delicious frosting. Plus what you didn't even realize you wanted, some Italian flair with hazelnuts, olive oil, and mascarpone cheese frosting! I am not usually a cake person, I would much prefer something salty most of the time, but wow this is a cake that I truly cannot resist!
Ingredients Needed
- Carrots - Required for a classic carrot cake, of course, and this is a carrot-packed version!
- Flour - We have made this recipe with both all-purpose and gluten-free 1:1 flour, and it's just as delicious gluten-free, too!
- Hazelnuts - Also known as filberts here in Oregon, they are one of my favorite nuts and are (in my opinion) way better than walnuts!
- Sugars - Both brown and white are used for this carrot cake recipe.
- Applesauce - This adds some great moisture and it also helps keep the flour from completely mixing with the wet ingredients which ultimately helps prevent a thick, dense cake. Have you made your own, yet?
- Greek Yogurt - This also helps keep moisture in the cake and the fat we prefer to use over a lot of butter or oil.
- Olive Oil - Another Italian aspect of this carrot cake! We use an extra light olive oil so as to not add too much olive flavor.
- Vanilla Extract - This recipe is also great with almond extract!
- Eggs - To create structure and add moisture to the cake.
- Baking soda and baking powder - We use both for this carrot cake recipe.
- Spices - Cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and one of my absolute favorites for baking, ground ginger.
Now for that mascarpone frosting!
- Mascarpone Cheese - This creamy Italian cheese is very similar to cream cheese so it's a natural fit for an Italian-style carrot cake! Can't find mascarpone in your local store? No problem, this is still just as delicious with cream cheese!
- Sugar - White granulated sugar is the best for this creamy frosting.
- Heavy Whipping Cream - Key to making a rich beautiful frosting!
- Lemon Juice - Just a touch to add some bright acidity.
- Almond Extract - This is just perfect to highlight the hazelnuts in this recipe! While still delicious with vanilla extract, we highly highly recommend using almond extract!
Can't find mascarpone or just want to keep it classic with a cream cheese frosting? We have a recipe for that too!
Helpful Tools
(Amazon affiliate links)- You can find all of my kitchen essentials here!
Hand Mixer - Not necessarily needed for the cake part of this recipe, but will definitely make your life easier when making the frosting!
Round Cake Pans - We use 9-inch pans, but 8-inch will also work!
Mixing Bowls - We love these glass mixing bowls and use them for everything!
Spatula - This will help with getting all of the cake batter out of your bowls and into your cake pans.
Frosting Spatula - For easier cake frosting!
Cake Frosting Stand - I don't have one but I know those who do and love them! Definitely will help with your cake decorating and is so very useful for those who do a lot more cake decorating than we do. Plus, this one comes with a bunch of cake-decorating tools, like a frosting spatula!
Kitchen Scale - This is one of our most used kitchen tools! Measuring flour and other dry ingredients is key for ensuring proper measurements.
Box Grater - To give those carrots a nice shred.
Baking sheet- To roast the hazelnuts.
Surprisingly Easy to Make
Create the batter. Just like the classic, our Italian Carrot Cake is surprisingly simple to make while still being show-stopping. No creaming of the butter and sugars is required for this one since the fat for this tender cake comes from oil. Just whisk those eggs with the other wet ingredients, mix the flour and other dry ingredients separately, mix it all together (be sure to not overmix!) then fold in your carrots and hazelnuts.
Bake! Add that batter to your well-greased cake pans and then they're ready to be baked!
Make the Frosting
The key to a delicious carrot cake is the frosting! And while the classic has a cream cheese frosting, our Italian-inspired version uses the European cousin to cream cheese, mascarpone cheese! This soft cheese is absolutely perfect for a thick creamy frosting with that familiar cheese tang but a lovely complimentary almond flavor!
Frosting the Cake
Disclaimer: I am not an avid cake decorator. I bet many of you out there have great cake decorating skills better than mine so please share with me when you make this and send pictures of your beautiful creations!
The first step (after your cake rounds are nice and cool) is to trim the top of one to make it nice and flat. Use a nice long serrated-edged knife - we use our bread knife for this. Then it's ready for a nice layer of that beautiful mascarpone frosting!
Once there's a nice layer of frosting on the first cake round, gently top it with the second cake round and give the top a nice layer of frosting. Now here is where you can stop, depending on what aesthetic is desired for your cake. You could of course just leave it with only the center frosted and top, or you can fully frost the whole cake.
Once your cake is as frosted as you want, then it's ready to decorate! Sprinkle on the remaining hazelnuts in whatever decorative manner you'd like! Give it a rim of hazelnuts on the top, cover the top all with hazelnuts, or give it your own beautiful and creative spin!
I always like to add just a tiny touch of carrot somehow on the top of the cake to make it very clear what kind of cake it is, especially since the hazelnuts might throw some people off. Once it is decorated how you would like, then you have an Italian Carrot Cake with Mascarpone Frosting!
Now isn't that a slice you'd love to devour? I sure did!
Recipe Tips
For this carrot cake recipe, oil is our choice for fat (in addition to the Greek yogurt). This is because butter contains some water whereas oil is 100% fat. What this means for your cake is that when the batter bakes, the water evaporates and that means there's more fat in the cake when it's baked, which is what creates that lovely tender texture. If you want a firmer cakier texture to your cake, that's when you want to use butter, but for a more tender, even crumb, and moist cake, you want to use oil. Plus oil contains the healthier monosaturated fats vs. butter's saturated fats.
Yes! Absolutely. I actually created this recipe using gluten-free flour first for a friend who requested a really good GF carrot cake and then also made it with all-purpose flour. See recipe notes for the conversion of all-purpose to GF 1:1 flour.
You're probably familiar with finding walnuts in a standard carrot cake, but let me tell you now that hazelnuts are far superior!
Mix the batter just enough so that it's all combined. If you overmix the batter then you can overwork the gluten in the flour and then create a denser crumb.
Be sure to let your cakes cool before trimming and frosting them. If you trim the cakes when they're still warm, they can crumble and tear. You could also pop them in the fridge to cool them faster!
Truly, this Italian Carrot Cake recipe is everything you wanted in a carrot cake plus more!
You Also Might Like
- Oatmeal Carrot Cake Cookies with Cream Cheese Frosting
- Cream Cheese Frosting From Scratch
- No Bake Carrot Cake Balls
- Carrot Cake Oatmeal
- Danish Puff Pastry
- Butterscotch Snickerdoodle Bread
Seriously this is such a tender, moist, flavorful cake. I'm not normally a sweets person, but I absolutely destroyed many large slices of this bad boy!
Look at that beautiful, tender soft crumb with just the right ratio of mascarpone frosting, carrot, and hazelnut crunch. It's an insanely delicious bite!
This Italian Carrot Cake with Mascarpone Frosting has now taken the top spot when it comes to desserts in our house, for very very good reason!
Enjoy! As always, if you make this recipe or any of my others, I love to hear what you think! Leave a comment below, email me, or you can find me on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest!
If you want to see more, be sure to sign up for my 5 Easy Ways to Start Cooking From Scratch!
Italian Carrot Cake
Equipment
- cake decorating stand optional
Ingredients
- 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour 310 g
- 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 7 g
- 1 teaspoon baking soda 6 g
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 4 g
- 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger 2 g
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt 3 g
- 3/4 cup Greek yogurt whole, 124 g
- 1/4 cup light olive oil 2 oz or 51 g
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar 116g
- 1/2 cup homemade applesauce 118 g, or unsweetened
- 3/4 cup light brown sugar 179 g
- 4 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 cups carrots shredded
- 1 1/3 cup whole raw hazelnuts divided, 5.75 oz
- butter or cooking spray to grease pans
Mascarpone Frosting
- 8 oz mascarpone cheese or cream cheese
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar 156 g
- 1 teaspoon almond extract
- 1 cup heavy whipping cream
- 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice
Instructions
- Prep Hazelnuts: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Add hazelnuts to a baking tray. Bake for 10 minutes. Set aside to cool.Once hazelnuts are cooled, chop. Keep a couple whole for final cake topping, if desired. (See recipe notes) Grease cake pans and set aside.
- Create Cake Batter: Whisk sugars, vanilla extract, eggs, oil, applesauce, and yogurt in a large bowl using a whisk or just a fork. Whisk flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg in a medium-sized bowl. Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients, mixing with a spatula, and mix until just combined, do not overmix. Fold in the shredded carrots and 2/3 of the chopped hazelnuts.
- Bake: Add batter to the greased cake pans, splitting the batter evenly between the two pans. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until the center pulls clean with a cake tester.
- Let Cool Completely: Let cool in the pans for 5 minutes before gently removing them from the pans to finish cooling on cooling racks.
- Make Frosting: Add all of the frosting ingredients to a medium-sized bowl and blend with a hand mixer until thick and creamy. Approximately 2 minutes.
- Frost the cake: Once completely cool, use a long serrated knife (like a bread knife) to gently trim the rounded top of one of the cakes so that it is flat. Place it upon either a cake decorating stand or whatever plate you will be storing the cake on.Add about 1/3 of the frosting to the top of the flattened topped cake and spread it in a thick and even layer. See recipe notes.Gently place the other cake, rounded side up and flat side down on top of the now frosted cake on the plate. Finish frosting the cake however you please. The frosting recipe will make enough to be able to fully cover the whole cake but you can frost it as much as you'd like.
- Garnish: Use the remaining hazelnuts to garnish around the edge of the top of the cake, or however you wish. Add the reserved whole hazelnuts to the center of the cake with some shredded carrot, if desired.
This Italian Carrot Cake with Mascarpone Frosting is an absolute delight! The moist cake, infused with warm spices and sweet carrots, perfectly complements the creamy richness of the mascarpone frosting.
Love to hear it, Savita! Thanks so much for sharing and taking the time to leave a review!
Great recipe and a great cake! The hazelnuts and mascarpone-based frosting really give this an Italian flair while feeling like a classic carrot cake. The mascarpone frosting is also lighter than a typical cream cheese frosting, which I loved. I had enough frosting to do a thick middle and top layer, a thin layer around the sides, and some leftover for piping on the top, which I thought was perfect!
I LOVE to hear this SO much, Ruth! Thank you so much for sharing!