Low-Carb Carrot Cake Muffins made grain-free, sugar-free, and dairy-free! These healthier carrot muffins are fun and easy to make and include all the trappings of a delicious carrot cake.
If you tried my Low-Carb Carrot Cake Bread, you already know what you’re in for!
A grain-free, sugar-free version of carrot cake in the form of muffins that also happens to be dairy-free and keto friendly.
This easy healthy muffins recipe is ideal for those watching their blood sugar, and folks who follow a keto diet.
Moist, fluffy, cinnamony, nutty and flavorful, these carrot cake muffins are delicious for those of us who don’t follow a sugar-free diet as well!
In addition, changing up the sweetener in the recipe is so simple that you can customize the recipe depending on your dietary needs. Simply swap out the sugar-free sweetener with coconut sugar or maple sugar to make these paleo, or use regular granulated cane sugar if you’d like.
While a traditional carrot cake recipe contains raisins, we must omit them in order to keep these keto carrot cake muffins low-carb and sugar-free.
That said, if you aren’t following a strict macro regiment and love raisins, feel free to add ½ cup to ⅔ cup to the recipe.
Let’s discuss the simple ingredients needed to make these amazing healthy carrot cake muffins!
Ingredients for Keto Carrot Cake Muffins:
Full-Fat Canned Coconut Milk: Used as the liquid and fat portion of the recipe, we use full-fat canned coconut milk. This provides richness and depth of flavor to the muffins due to the high fat content, so I don’t recommend substituting it with any other low-fat non-dairy milk like almond milk.
While I haven’t tested the recipe using melted butter yet, I’m willing to bet it will work marvelously as a replacement for the coconut milk if you prefer butter.
Eggs: Used to fluff up the muffins and make them nice and airy, we use chicken eggs to give these muffins a nice rise. I haven’t tested the recipe using a egg replacer yet; however, in my experience grain-free recipes like this tend to turn out pretty dense when the eggs are replaced with something like flax eggs.
Vanilla Extract: Vanilla extract brings warmth and depth to any baked good! If you don’t have it on hand, the muffins will still be great without it.
Cider Vinegar or Lemon Juice: We need acidity to react with the baking soda to complete our leavening in this recipe. Any acidic ingredient you have will work here – you won’t taste it in the muffins.
Almond Flour: Classic carrot cake uses all-purpose flour or wheat flour, but we use almond flour as our low-carb flour of choice here. Fine almond flour is marvelous for grain-free muffins and gluten-free baking in general due to its light texture and substantial fat content. I personally find it to have the best texture for keto muffins.
I haven’t tested the recipe using coconut flour, but many changes would need to be made to the portions of other ingredients for coconut flour carrot cake muffins, as coconut flour absorbs four times the liquid as almond flour. For this reason, coconut flour is not a good 1:1 replacement for almond flour in this recipe.
Unsweetened Shredded Coconut: True to traditional carrot cake, we add unsweetened shredded coconut for that lovely coconut flavor. If you don’t like coconut, you can replace it with ½ cup of additional almond flour.
Sugar-Free Sweetener: In keeping these Keto Carrot Cake Muffins sugar-free, we use low carb sweetener for sweetening the treats. Pick your favorite brand you’re familiar with! Lakanto, Swerve, and Truvia are my top three recommendations.
If you don’t follow a ketogenic diet or if you aren’t watching your blood sugar, feel free to replace the sugar-free sweetener with maple sugar, coconut sugar, or regular cane sugar.
Cinnamon, nutmeg, ground ginger: These spics are crucial in getting that iconic carrot cake flavor! It’s amazing what cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger bring to a recipe, and the deliciousness of these muffins are dependent on them! Don’t skip them!
Baking Soda: Used as the leavening agent for these muffins, baking soda helps the muffins rise, bake evenly, and stay fluffy and held together. It also gives those tasty muffin tops a nice little crisp!
Fresh Carrot: The real star here! Fresh grated carrot is what makes a carrot cake recipe a carrot cake recipe, am I right?? We need one huge or two small carrots to make these muffins happen.
Raw Pecans or Walnuts: Because carrot cake isn’t carrot cake without nuts, we use either raw pecans or raw walnuts. I used pecans for this particular round, but walnuts are amazing too!
Optional Frosting For The Muffins:
Cream Cheese Frosting: If you love cream cheese icing, feel free to whip up a keto friendly Sugar-Free Cream Cheese Frosting by combining 3 ounces of cream cheese, 2 tablespoons of sugar-free sweetener, ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract, and 3 to 4 tablespoons of milk or heavy cream in a mixing bowl with an electric mixer or in a stand mixer. Simply beat these ingredients until the frosting is well-combined and creamy.
Simple Glaze: If you prefer simple glazes, stir together 1 cup of sugar-free confectioners sweetener with 2 tablespoons of water. This is the route I took for the muffins. I sprinkled unsweetened shredded coconut on top of the glaze while it was still wet to get coconut to stick to the muffins.
Let’s bake a batch of low carb carrot cake muffins!
How to Make Low-Carb Carrot Cake Muffins:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and line a 12-hole muffin tray with muffin liners.
Whisk together the full-fat canned coconut milk, eggs, and vanilla extract together in a large bowl (wet ingredients) until combined. You can make the batter in a food processor or blender if you prefer one of those methods over using a mixing bowl, or you can also use an electric hand mixer.
Note: If your can of coconut milk has been in a cold room and the flesh is separated from the water, stir it together until it’s nice and creamy before working with it. If the flesh is very solid, you can transfer the coconut milk to a jar and microwave it for 20 to 40 seconds until it’s easy to combine the water and the fat.
Add the almond flour, sugar-free sweetener, shredded coconut, baking soda, ground cinnamon, ground ginger, ground nutmeg, and sea salt (dry ingredients) to the mixing bowl and stir well until a thick dough forms.
Stir the grated carrot and chopped nuts into the batter until everything is well-combined.
Transfer the muffin batter to the prepared muffin pan, filling the muffin papers all the way up.
Bake on the center rack of the preheated oven for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the muffins test clean.
Allow the muffins to cool completely before glazing them and serving.
Store any leftover carrot cake muffins in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 7 days. You can also transfer the muffins to a zip lock bag and freeze them for up to 3 months.
Nutrition Information:
When made into 12 muffins, each of these low carb carrot muffins contains 278 calories, 14 grams of total carbohydrates, 4 grams of fiber, and therefore 10 grams of net carbs. For this reason, these low-carb muffins may not work for those following a strict keto diet, depending on the amount of net carbs you’re aiming for each day.
For active individuals, eating upwards of 50 to 100 grams of carbs a day is manageable while still maintaining ketosis, whereas individuals who aren’t as active or don’t exercise rigorously, 30 grams of carbs per day is the typical goal.
All of that said, these sugar-free muffins should be fine for those looking to manage their blood sugar or who follow a general low carb diet. The majority of the carbohydrate comes from the almond flour, with a small amount coming from the carrot and the raw pecans. In order to make these true keto carrot muffins, you would need to substitute some of all of the almond meal for coconut flour, which would also require more adjustments to the rest of the recipe.
To summarize, whether or not keto recipes like this fit your lifestyle depends on your goals and metabolic state.
Can I Use a Different Sweetener?
There are a few options here for paleo carrot cake muffins!
You can follow the recipe here, substituting maple sugar or coconut sugar for the sugar-free granulated sweetener, or you can make my Healthy Carrot Muffins, which are sweetened with banana or my Paleo Carrot Cake which is sweetened with pure maple syrup.
That’s it! Everything you need for a tasty keto carrot cake cupcakes treat!
If you’re looking for more keto desserts, try my Keto Lemon Pound Cake, Keto Blueberry Crumb Bars, Keto Lemon Bars, Keto Cinnamon Swirl Bread, and my Keto Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars!
Bake these tasty low-carb carrot cake muffins for all your brunches, gatherings, or any time you’re in the mood for something delicious!
Low-Carb Carrot Cake Muffins
Ingredients
- 1 cup full-fat canned coconut milk
- 3 large eggs
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract optional
- 2 tsp cider vinegar or lemon juice
- 3 cups Almond Flour
- ⅔ cup unsweetened shredded coconut
- 2/3 cup sugar-free sweetener*
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp ground ginger
- ¼ tsp ground nutmeg optional
- 1/4 tsp sea salt
- 1 large carrot grated (about 1 cup)
- ½ cup raw pecans or walnuts chopped
Optional Glaze:
- 1 cup sugar-free powdered sugar
- 2 to 3 Tbsp lemon juice or water
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and line a 12-hole muffin tray with muffin liners.
- Whisk together the full-fat canned coconut milk, eggs, and vanilla extract together in a large bowl.
- Add the almond flour, unsweetened shredded coconut, sugar-free sweetener, baking soda, ground cinnamon, ground ginger, ground nutmeg, and sea salt (dry ingredients) to the mixing bowl and stir well until a thick dough forms.
- Stir the grated carrot and chopped nuts into the batter until everything is well-combined.
- Transfer the muffin batter to the prepared muffin pan, filling the muffin papers all the way up.
- Bake on the center rack of the preheated oven for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the muffins test clean.
- Allow the muffins to cool completely before glazing them and serving. If you're making the optional glaze, simply stir the sugar-free powdered sugar and lemon juice (or water) together in a mixing bowl until it's creamy.
- Drizzle the glaze over the muffins.
- Serve the muffins and enjoy!
Notes
Nutrition
These look great and I’m excited to try them! I bake for a variety of dietary needs including allergies, and this recipe looks to work for all. I did notice a couple minor issues in the instructions. You have coconut in the ingredients but don’t ever add it to the batter (just show it on top). And in the instructions you mention baking powder when it should be soda according to your post. I’m looking forward to trying these for an Easter weekend brunch! Thanks for the recipe!
Thanks so much for catching those errors! I went ahead and fixed them 😀 I hope you enjoy the muffins and have a great weekend!