Carrot Cake, Vegetable Oil or Butter?

I’m in the melted butter camp. I have also used melted ghee and that worked well too. My husband doesn’t like dense cakes, so he didn’t like carrot cake until I replaced the oil with melted butter or ghee. I don’t add pineapple or raisins to my recipe…just toasted pecans.

Yes, oil is the way to go. Butter is only okay. Why? Because carrot cake is not like any other kind of cake - where butter is of course the best. Oil produces the best, cakiest, result for carrot cake (or any other cake with a lot of raw shredded vegetable) because of the way these 2 components interact with each other. Commenter "HalfPint" who made a comment here 7 years ago has it right.

Absolutely butter! I just cannot make myself eat oil...in anything I make...if I need oil, I will use clarified butter. I will fry in oil if I have to, but I will mix it with clarified butter. But absolutely never use it in my baking.

Can I put butter in instead of margarine

Forget butter. Salted or unsalted. Skip vegetable oil. Don't go near applesauce. What? Why? What's up with applesauce? ... If you're going to make a carrot cake the way to go is olive oil. You don't know me, but trust me. Olive oil.

I tried a lemon glaze and I was the only one who liked it. The people sitting at my table are used to the traditional cream cheese frosting. I appreciate you letting me know I am not alone.

We make it with Olive oil and almonts
Lemon sugar glazing
www.cooking-class-authentic-tuscany.com

My thanks to The Bitter Chef. I have made two carrot cakes now both with olive oil and to my taste, it is right on.

I'll do it with olive oil! Need to work out my ratios first, but I am going to give it my best shot.

Won't make carrot cake any other way. No need to use expensive extra-virgin. Every day olive oil does the trick. Now go make one. Now. It won't make itself.

Would olive oil work okay? Butter is tough to beat, but if I were to decide to give oil a try, olive would be my first choice. But let me ask you this, THE BITTER CHEF, have you actually tried making a carrot cake with olive oil?

What? No love for olive oil? Once you go olive oil in carrot cake, you'll never go back.

This is the carrot cake recipe I have used for decades, from The Bakery Lane Cookbook: Freeman Allen's Carrot Cake. Bakery Lane was a restaurant in Middlebury, VT, famous for this cake and other great baked goods. http://andbabycakesthree.blogspot.com/2011/09/perfect-birthday-cake-included.html

In my experience, using butter in carrot cake really gives a more "cake-y" texture. Closer to pound cake, really. But oil results in a texture closer to moist bread (like banana bread?)

Thank you all for such wonderfully informative and inspiring answers. Like so many issues of personal preference, it sounds like either one is a good choice. It just depends ...

Carrot cake typically calls for oil rather than butter because in other cakes, a butter cake, for example, the way in which the soft butter and sugar are whipped together creates a nest of tiny pocket of air which help to leaven the cake. Carrot cake is more dense because of its many heavy ingredients, so this step is unnecessary, and would likely destabilize the cake, again because of all the weighty stuff in it. If you prefer the taste of butter, you can certainly substitute it, but melt it first so that you can treat it as you would oil.

Another vote for oil. Oil gives the cake moistness and it's often what's used in carrot, zucchini, and other quick breads.

I'm a huge unsalted butter fan, but oil is much better in carrot cake!

I vote for butter as it makes a nicer flavour and I can't stand light, fluffy carrot cake. Carrot cake made with veg oil tastes like health food imitating yummy food.

Besides, carrot cake should be rich and dense, almost to the point of being a secret moist and naughty indulgence. It should make you feel pleasantly guilty for absconding with a slice for breakfast as you run out the door. It should be an amnesiac drug to make you forget that carrots have health benefits as well as making the cake sweet and sultry (because carrots are nothing if not sultry). That's what perfect carrot cake is to me, and in order to do all that, it needs butter, real butter.

The recipe I use calls for 1/2 cup vegetable oil and 1/2 cup apple sauce. The cake ends up light and fluffy and moist.

Butter can make carrot cake very heavy and dense. Oil makes carrot cake (most cakes really) lighter (i.e. fluffier).

The oil makes it moist.