• Recipes
  • Equipment Reviews
  • Taste Tests
  • How to Cook
  • Videos

Reduced-Fat Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

From

April​/May 2009

Reduced-Fat Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Using too much shredded carrot in our recipe for Reduced-Fat Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting made the batter difficult to spread and the cake heavy. One pound of carrots was all the batter could handle. Instead of oil substitutes, we found that pureed carrots—aka baby food—contributed moisture and just the right flavor. For the frosting, we found that Neufchatel, with 1/3 less fat than regular cream cheese, contributed the right amount of heft and tang. We replaced the butter in the frosting with a surprising ingredient: marshmallow creme. Made with egg whites, corn syrup, and sugar, the creme blended easily with the neufchatel and yielded thick frosting with no additional fat. In the end, traditional carrot cake with cream cheese frosting was 530 calories, 33 grams of fat, and 8 grams of saturated fat per serving. Our Reduced-Fat Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting was only 280 calories, 11 grams of fat, and 3 grams of saturated fat per serving.

Serves 15

Any cream cheese with 1/3 less fat will work here. To ensure thick frosting, use marshmallow creme (such as Fluff or Jet-Puffed), not marshmallow sauce. Shred carrots on large holes of a box grater or with the shredding disk of a food processor.

Ingredients

The recipe you requested is for
Members Only.

Start Your 14-Day Free Trial Membership

Every Recipe. Every Rating. Every Video from
Every Magazine & Every Episode!
  • 8 years of Cook’s Country Foolproof Recipes
  • Complete Cook’s Country TV Video Library
  • 2,900+ Equipment Ratings and Ingredient Taste Tests
  • Step-by-Step Technique Photos
  • Save Favorites, Create Menus, Print Shopping Lists
How we use your e-mail address
Christopher Kimball, Founder and Publisher

Dear Home Cook,

If I were new to CooksCountry.com, I might think, "It's easy to get free recipes on the Internet. What makes your recipes different?" Well, unlike recipes from blogs, message boards, and other recipe sites, our recipes are exhaustively tested by our team of full-time test cooks until they offer consistently great results. That means fried chicken with a crunchy coating and moist meat, a low-fat recipe makeover for macaroni and cheese that’s as creamy and cheesy as the full-fat version, and fork-tender slow cooker pot roast.

We're obsessive in our quest to find and foolproof the best of American home cooking, from fuss-free weeknight dinners, to updated, simplified versions of regional specialties, to slow cooker and make ahead meals. CooksCountry.com is the only place you can find every foolproof recipe published in Cook’s Country magazine since 2005, plus objective ratings and test results from both Cook’s Country and Cook’s Illustrated for cookware and supermarket ingredients.

Let me make a simple, no-nonsense offer. Try out our website FREE for a 14-Day, No-Hassle Trial Offer. I’m pretty confident that CooksCountry.com will quickly become an invaluable resource for everything from a quick Tuesday supper to your next get-together with family and friends.

Thanks for your consideration,

Christopher Kimball

Christopher Kimball
Founder and Publisher

How we use your e-mail address
Related Content
© 2013 America’s Test Kitchen. All rights reserved.