Carrot cake whoopie pies are soft, cake-like cookies filled with shredded carrots, pecans, and warm spices like cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg. Filled with cream cheese frosting and perfect for Easter as well as fall!
These carrot cake whoopie pies are perfect for spring. They are soft, cakey, and filled with shredded carrots and pecans. They're also fantastic in the fall, with warm spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger.
If you've never had a whoopie pie before, these sandwich cookies are very soft and cake-like. Two cake cookies are filled with a creamy frosting and sandwiched together.
I filled these carrot cake cookies with a cream cheese frosting, but my whipped buttercream frosting is another fan-favorite for filling whoopie pies!
Ingredients and substitutions
Since baking is an exact science, I do not have many substitutions to offer for this recipe. Each ingredient serves a purpose and I do not recommend omitting anything entirely.
Unsalted butter and salt can be substituted with salted butter.
Pecans can be swapped with walnuts, toasted shredded coconut, or white chocolate chips.
Grating carrots
To grate my carrots, I used the smaller side of a simple box grater. I recommend peeling your carrots, then grating into a bowl, measuring as you go until you have as much as you need for the recipe.
Perfectly sized cookies
Perfectly sized cookiesI like to use a medium OXO cookie scoop to measure my dough out into perfectly sized cookies.
This is especially important for whoopie pies, since you'll be pairing your cookies together to make sandwiches.
Properly measured flour
Arguably the biggest issue I see with cookie baking is the improper measuring of flour.
I recommend either measuring your flour using a kitchen scale (one cup of flour is 120 grams), or using the spoon and level method.
Using a spoon, fill your measuring cup with flour, then level off with a knife. Using your measuring cup to scoop the flour compacts flour into the cup, adding up to 25% extra flour to your cookie dough.
This will cause your cookies to be thick and tall, and they won't spread well when baked. Properly measured flour will prevent this!
Carrot Cake Whoopie Pies
Ingredients
Carrot Cake Cookies
- ½ cup unsalted butter room temperature
- ½ cup brown sugar
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs room temperature
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- ½ teaspoon nutmeg
- 1 ½ cups grated carrots
- ½ cup chopped pecans or walnuts
Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting
- 2.5 ounces cream cheese from a block, room temperature
- 4 ounces unsalted butter room temperature
- 2 cups confectioner's sugar
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 tablespoons heavy cream optional
Instructions
Carrot Cake Cookies
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugars. Add eggs and vanilla extract. Beat for a full 3 minutes, mixture will look fluffy.
- In a separate bowl, sift together the dry ingredients flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg.
- Gradually stir dry ingredients into butter mixture until just combined. Add grated carrots and pecans to dough and stir until evenly incorporated
- ing a medium cookie scoop (or a heaping tablespoon), spoon cookie dough 2 inches apart onto prepared baking sheet. Recipe should make 30 individual cookies total.
- Bake for 9-10 minutes, or until lightly browned around edges. Allow to cool for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.
Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting
- In a large bowl, cream together the cream cheese and butter until combined. Add vanilla and half off the powdered sugar, mixing slowly to combine. Add remaining powdered sugar and mix slowly to combine. Once incorporated, beat on high speed for 2 to 3 minutes, until light and fluffy.
- Optionally, add heavy cream one tablespoon at a time until desired consistency is achieved.
- Pipe or spread frosting onto half of the cookies, then top with remaining cookies to make sandwiches.
Equipment Recommendations
Notes
- Your cookies will keep for 3-4 days in a sealed container. To help keep cookies fresh, you can place a slice of bread in the container with the cookies. Replace the bread slice as needed.
- Cream cheese frosting can be substituted with a Whipped Buttercream Frosting instead.
- Block cream cheese must be used to make your frosting. Cream cheese in a tub, or whipped cream cheese, will result in a runny frosting.
Denise Weiland
Loved them!!
Sam
Followed to a T - weighed the flour properly as well - and all baked into each other like flat sploches. The cakes were greasy and too much ginger.
Heather
Hi Sam, I'm sorry to hear that your cookies didn't turn out! I'd love to try and help figure out what happened.
Did you use a greased baking sheet instead of a parchment lined baking sheet? This will cause cookies to spread more as well as make them greasier. This recipe uses half the normal amount of butter due to the addition of carrots, so that's surprising that they turned out greasy. Did the cookie dough look like it does in the photos above before baking, or did it look thin once you added a particular ingredient? If you have any remaining dough, you can try refrigerating it, or freezing your prepared cookie sheet for about 10 minutes before baking. Cold dough will spread less in the oven.
Thank you for the feedback on the ginger - next time I make these I'll try the recipe with half as much and see how it tastes!