Typically, a cake would not be my ideal sweet treat for the week, but when it is your roommates’ birthday and you are crowned the baker of the apartment, duty calls. When scheming up her ideal perfect birthday cake, the first type that came to her mind was a carrot cake. With the recent recall on carrots impacting the only place I shop for groceries, my beloved Trader Joe’s, I figured the safer bet would be to stay away from carrots. 

As I am scrolling through my Instagram feed to find a similar substitute for a carrot cake, I stumbled across Jenna Barnard’s page filled with no-bake cheesecakes, maple pumpkin cookies and salted caramel chocolate chip cookie bars that truly make my mouth water like no other. 

One of her most recent posts was this Spice Cake With Brown Butter Cream Cheese Frosting. It’s practically the same baseline recipe as a carrot cake, but minus the carrots. I decided to give it my best attempt and spoiler alert, it was the ultimate crowd pleaser!

The process

Let’s get started with the recipe. To make the process easier on myself, I decided to make and bake the cakes the night before, allowing them to fully cool overnight and then sit in the fridge, leaving them firm and much easier to frost. 

To begin, you will need to preheat your oven to 350 degrees, then butter your two eight-inch cake pans and line them with parchment paper. 

Grab a large bowl and combine all of the following dry ingredients: 

• 2 ¾ cups all purpose flour
• 1 ½ tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp cardamom 
• 1 tsp ginger
• ½ tsp nutmeg
• ¼ tsp cloves

After whisking the ingredients together, this is what it should look like: 

Next, you will want to grab a second bowl for the wet ingredients. Start by hand whisking or using a handheld electric mixer to combine the following ingredients:

• 2 cups light brown sugar
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup unsweetened applesauce

Once combined, whisk in 4 room temperature eggs, one at a time. Then add in 3 tsp of vanilla extract. The mixture should be slightly lighter in color. 

Lastly, you will need to combine the dry and wet ingredients. Beginning with the dry ingredients, pour about half of the dry mixture into the wet ingredients bowl and mix to combine. Follow that with three fourths cup of sour cream — room temperature, then the rest of the dry ingredients. This is what the batter should look like: 

Finally, evenly split the batter amongst the two cake pans we prepared before. The pans should be around two thirds of the way full. 

Bake the cakes in the preheated oven for about 35 to 40 minutes. Mine baked for exactly 35 minutes. As always, you can use a toothpick or butterknife to check the centers of the cake for doneness. 

Once the cakes are baked and out of the oven, place them on a wire cooling rack, if you have one. Placing the cakes on a wire rack instead of on top of the oven to cool allows for full air circulation around the pans — preventing the metal from continuing to cook the bottoms of the cake.

The next morning, I flipped out the cakes from their pan, wrapped them in foil, though plastic wrap would have been better, and placed them in the fridge until I was ready to frost them. 

Making the frosting

To begin the frosting, I first browned 1 cup of unsalted butter. Browning butter can be a tedious process for new bakers, but patience is key. You will want to melt down the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. After 5 to 10 minutes, the butter should begin bubbling and creating a foam. At this point, you will want to stir continuously. The milk solids from the butter will start to sit at the bottom of the pan and give off a nutty, amber fragrance. Once the milk solids have become toasted and browned, transfer the butter to a bowl to cool. 

The butter will then need to solidify a bit before being mixed with the cream cheese for the frosting. The butter texture should be that of room temperature, softened butter. If you are in a time crunch, you can put the bowl of butter into the freezer for a few minutes to solidify quicker. Just keep an eye on it so you don’t end up with frozen butter!

Next, you will need 16 oz of cream cheese, softened to room temperature. Once the cream cheese is softened and the butter is solidified, combine the two with a whisk. 

Before

After

Then, add one cup of powdered sugar at a time to the cream cheese and butter mixture. The recipe calls for 5 cups of powdered sugar in total, but I ended up using 4 cups of powdered sugar instead. After the first cup of powdered sugar, you will also want to add in a half tsp of vanilla extract. Continue adding and mixing the powdered sugar until your desired consistency of frosting has been achieved, aiming for a set yet spreadable consistency. 

The assembly of the cake 

Finally, we have reached the fun part! Before beginning to stack and frost the cakes, we will want to level off the tops of the cakes and slice them in half to make 4 layers. Slicing the cakes in half are completely optional, but it gives a better distribution of the frosting. Plus, the more layers the more impressive you look!

To level off the tops of the cake, I used a large knife and attempted to get as much of a flat surface as possible — it obviously does not need to be perfect. Using the same knife I sliced the cake in half. 

Once the cakes are leveled and sliced in half, you can begin frosting and stacking. For an easy cleanup I placed a piece of parchment paper under the cake to keep my serving display clean. 

Starting with the base layer, spread an even amount of frosting between each layer until all 4 layers are stacked. After this, you’ll want to frost a “crumb coat” on the outside of the cake layers. A crumb coat is exactly what it sounds like, a coating of frosting to seal in the crumbs of the cake. Usually after the crumb coat, it’s a good idea to set the cake in the fridge for 20-30 minutes before the last layer of frosting. By giving the cake time to solidify, you’ll find the final frosting layer goes on more smoothly.

After the cake has solidified for about 20 minutes, it’s time to frost the final layer of frosting. It certainly does not need to be perfectly smooth. I, for one, find the “rustic” aesthetic of the frosting very charming and homey. 

Once the cake has been frosted to your liking, set it in the fridge until your guests arrive. And, of course do not forget to document your stunning creation!