Why was my carrot cake very heavy? I made carrot cake but it turned out very heavy. Is this normal?

I followed this recipe:


2 cups all purpose flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tsp each: cinnamon, salt, vanilla
2 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
1 cup each: grated carrots, sweetened coconut, raisins, various nuts
2/3 cup oil
1/2 stick butter
1/4 applesauce


Combine all dry ingredients in one bowl,  all other in separate bowl.  Add wet to dry and stir until combined. 

Bake for 30 minutes on 350 degrees F.  Let it cool in the pan for 15 minutes, then get it out and cool it on a rack.
If I had to guess, I'd attribute it to the huge amount of stuff that's in the batter, which makes it more like a fruitcake than like a traditional cake.

You only have two cups of flour but you have four cups of carrot, coconut, raisins and nuts. This is definitely going to make a very dense cake and it sounds like it's supposed to.

This is pretty common in carrot cake recipes but it's not required. I recommend that you find a recipe designed to be more cake-y (higher flour to stuff ratio) rather than trying to fix this one. I've been really happy with the carrot cake recipe from Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen but it's behind a paywall.