Instant Pot Carrot Snack Cake #BakingBloggers

Delightfully rich and full of sweet carrot flavor, this sticky carrot snack cake is baked in an Instant Pot - keeping your kitchen cool during the summer - and then spread with lemony cream cheese frosting.

When it’s too hot outside to turn your oven on, an Instant Pot comes in mighty handy, even for baking cake. This carrot snack cake bakes up lovely, light and tender. If you have a sweet tooth, you can top it with cream cheese frosting (recipe below) or sprinkle with some powdered sugar, but it’s also great just on its own.

This month my Baking Blogger group is challenging the notion that everything must be baked in a full size oven by using small appliances instead. Despite owning the Instant Pot since the summer of 2016, I really hadn’t tested its baking abilities. For a one-layer snack cake, I may never turn the oven on again!

If you don’t have an Instant Pot yet, I recommend you wait for Prime Day on July 16th to buy one on Amazon. There are always deals on Instant Pots! The one I have is 6 in 1, in other words, it has six functions. On newer pots you can get up to 10 functions!

I’ve adapted the carrot snack cake batter from my family’s favorite carrot cake recipe, known around these parts as David’s Carrot Cake. But for Instant Pot baking instructions, I looked to my friend Kathy Hester’s great Instant Pot cookbook.

If you haven’t met Kathy, you need to head on over to her blog for a tour. Her recipes are all vegan but don’t let that scare you off. Everything I’ve ever made of hers has been delicious, from her easy avocado lemon pesto to her chickpea vegetable soup, but my all time favorite is her mushroom ginger congee, made not with the traditional rice, but oats! Both my husband and I licked our bowls clean of that gorgeous dish and moaned when the pot was empty.

Instant Pot Carrot Snack Cake

The Instant Pot doesn’t make baking this carrot snack cake any faster than the traditional oven method. The advantage is keeping your kitchen cool in the summer and still getting to enjoy a tasty cake! If you live somewhere hot, trust me, that is a really big deal.

Ingredients
For the cake batter:
8 oz or 225g carrots
1 cup or 125g flour
2/3 cup or 133g sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg, at room temperature
1/2 cup or 120ml canola or another light cooking oil, plus a little extra for the pan

For the cream cheese frosting:
1 cup or 125g powdered sugar
4 oz or 113g cream cheese, at room temperature
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

To decorate and add lemon flavor:
Zest 1 lemon

Method
Peel and cut the ends off of your carrots and cut them into short lengths.

Cover them with water in a medium sized pot and cook until very fork tender, about 10-15 minutes. Drain the water off and mash them with a potato masher until there aren’t any lumps. Set aside to cool.

Prepare your 8 in or 20cm round cake pan by greasing it with a little oil.  In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Prepare your Instant Pot by adding 1 1/2 cups of water to the pot. Put the wire rack inside the pot. Fold a long length of foil to create a two-sided handle that will go under your baking pan, enabling you to remove it from the Instant Pot when the cake is done.

When the carrots are cool, add in the egg and oil and whisk till they are well combined.

Pour the wet ingredients into the bowl with the dry ingredients. Stir gently until they are well mixed and no dry flour is showing.

Spoon the batter into the prepared pan and even out the top with knife.

Cover the pan with foil, making sure to keep it flat against the sides so the pan will still fit in the Instant Pot.

Using the folded foil handle, lower the covered pan carefully into the Instant Pot, all the way down till it is sitting on the wire rack. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions to set it to cook for 35 minutes, with the steam release sealed.

When the cooking time is up, leave the Instant Pot to depressurize naturally. The Instant Pot automatically goes into Keep Warm mode, so I thought it would be necessary to turn that off. In fact, it doesn’t make any difference if you do or don’t.  It will depressurize regardless. Mine took about 30 minutes.

When it’s safe to take the lid off, do so and carefully remove it. Use the foil handles to take the cake pan out of the Instant pot, remove the foil lid and set the carrot snack cake on a wire rack to cool for about 10 minutes.

Turn the cake out of the pan and leave to cool completely on the wire rack.

Meanwhile, make the cream cheese frosting by mixing all of the ingredients together until they are smooth and all the lumps are gone. I start with a fork then end with a spatula.

When the cake has cooled completely, top it with the cream cheese frosting and spread it out to the edges of the cake.

Sprinkle on the lemon zest.

Cut into wedges to serve. Enjoy!

Because of the cream cheese frosting, it's best to refrigerate any leftovers. I popped my clean cake pan over the top of mine to keep it from drying out in the fridge. You can cover the cake with cling film but know that the cream cheese frosting is going to stick to it.

Many thanks to Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm for handling all the behind the scenes work this month. Check out the other small appliances bakes we have for you today!

• Air Fryer Cheesy Vegetable Tart from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Crockpot Sour Cream Pound Cake from Our Good Life 
• Hot Chocolate Pudding Cake from Sid's Sea Palm Cooking 
• Instant Pot Carrot Snack Cake from Food Lust People Love 
• Jam Cheesecake from A Day in the Life on the Farm 
• Slow Cooker Reeses Cake from Cookaholic Wife 
• Strawberry Sandwich Toaster Cake from Sneha's Recipe 

Baking Bloggers is a friendly group of food bloggers who vote on a shared theme and then post recipes to fit that theme one the second Monday of each month. If you are a food blogger interesting in joining in, inquire at our Baking Bloggers Facebook group. We'd be honored if you would join us in our baking adventures.

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