Gluten free carrot cake with orange mascarpone frosting and toasted coconut

Aurelia Brogan
Apr 10, 2020
4 min read

Use what you have. That’s the message. No trying to go out to get your traditional ingredients, or to make things the way that everyone is used to year after year. This year will be different, quiet, memorable and unique. Many of us just thankful we are home safe and together. Yes, Easter feels different this year and the meal will be too. What are you cobbling together or are you taking out? We will work with what we have this year for our Spring holidays and feel grateful for it. I hope you followed my last post about how to have your family join you at the table with photos. So on Sunday whatever you eat, raise a toast to those not with you– the heroic nurses and doctors in your family, or those friends and family working in the grocery stores, or the teachers figuring out online school, or anyone you know who is doing whatever they can to help in this pandemic. Staying home is helping too…it keeps us out of the way of people doing the important stuff. This Sunday, I’ll also toast to Spring and the promise of rebirth and renewal when this pandemic begins to leave us.

Give your loved ones’s photos a seat at the table

One tradition we didn’t want to let go of is our bunny cake, which I mentioned last time uses the Williams Sonoma bunny mold my mother-in-law bought me about 10 years ago. I was able to find a little bit of sugar, enough for half the cake, so for the other half I made a gluten free carrot cake with orange mascarpone frosting and toasted coconut. It turned out delicious. Whatever you do and whatever you have best wishes for a safe and healthy holiday.

This cake is so cute and springy and gluten free! This recipe makes half of the mold, which would be more than enough for my family, but I experimented with making a regular pound cake in the other side of the form baked at the same time, and both cakes came out just perfect.

Print Recipe

Gluten Free Carrot Cake with Orange Mascarpone frosting and toasted coconut

Twinning-2 Easter Bunnies! A Gluten Free Carrot Cake with Orange Mascarpone frosting and toasted coconut (and a traditional pound cake–baked together in a mold.)

Course: Dessert

Keyword: Carrot Cake, Easter bunny cake, Easter Gluten free, Gluten Free, Gluten free carrot cake, mascarpone frosting

Ingredients

1 ½ cups grated carrots ( I used orange, purple and yellow)
¼ cups grated or chopped pineapple, fresh or canned
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup sugar
¾ cup canola oil (you could try your own substitutions here for example 1/4 cup applesauce for 1/4 cup oil), and different kinds of light oils depending on what you have on hand.
2 eggs
3/4 cup gluten free flour ( I use King Arthur)
1/4 cup GF oat flour
1/8 cup GF almond meal (can sub almond flour)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp nutmeg
½ tsp vanilla

Orange Marscapone Frosting with Toasted Coconut

1½ cups confectioners sugar
4 ounces mascarcpone cheese you could alternatively use cream cheese)
2 tbsp milk (may need more or less)
1/2 zest of 1/2 an orange (can use more if you like)
1/4 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups coconut, toasted on medium for about 4 minutes or until golden and cooled. You can use unsweetened if you want it less sweet, or for a sweeter flavor use sweetened flaked coconut.

Instructions

Preheat oven to 325°F. Some notes: If you do not have a bunny pan, you can also use a 9" cake pan. Spray with non stick spray, or butter and flour. (If using round, line bottom of pans with waxed paper). You can double the recipe for gluten free if you would rather only have this cake, then at the end place the pieces together to stand the cake up. For my purposes I'm doing 2 cakes, separated. This recipe makes 1/2 of the large mold, or one 9" cake.

In a food processor or a manual grater, shred carrots and pineapple. I used a yellow, orange and a purple carrot too because that's all we had, which gave a nice dark hue to the cake.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk sugars and oil and eggs well until combined very well, about 1 minute.

In another smaller bowl, measure flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg and whisk to combine. Make sure there are no lumps. Mix this into sugar, egg, and oil mixture with a wooden spoon or spatula. Stir in carrots and pineapple.

Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean and cakes begin to pull away from sides of pans, about 50-55 minutes. Cool in pans on racks 15 minutes. Turn out cakes onto racks and cool completely.

For frosting: Toast coconut until golden, about 4-5 minutes. Cool and chop either manually or in a small chopper until it's smaller in size, but not dusty or too small.

Using electric mixer, beat confectioners sugar, cheese, milk, vanilla and orange zest in medium bowl until smooth and creamy. Frosting should not be runny or too still. You will make a thin layer on the cake with a spreader or knife, just enough so that the coconut will stick. Too much and it'll be too sweet. Place cake on platter or dish. Spread with all over with frosting. Top cooled toasted coconut.

Other Bunny Pound Cake

(Follow instructions for 1/2 cake recipe on the Williams Sonoma Cake Mold. It works great every time. https://www.williams-sonoma.com/recipe/bunny-with-basket-cake.html er-bunny-cake.htmThe only thing I change in this recipe is to add lemon juice and lemon zest in place of the vanilla, and add a bit more milk.

The timing worked out well. The gluten free cake looked like it was cooking faster, but in the end it was moist and perfectly done in the same time as the gluten-full Williams Sonoma version. I obviously kept the cakes separate, so there was no cross-contamination. You could also use a single bunny mold or just a round cake pan and decorate to your liking. I found that half recipe is plenty of cake!