This is my favorite easy cake design for carrot cake! One of our most popular recipes! Just read all the rave reviews!
Slice of carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. Carrot Cake Ingredients The ingredients you need for this cake are simple and I bet you have quite a few of them already in your kitchen! I like using all-purpose flour, but you can substitute some of the all-purpose flour for whole wheat or white whole wheat flour. For a gluten-free carrot cake, swap the flour for your favorite gluten-free flour blend. Baking soda helps the cake to rise.
We don’t add baking powder, the cake does not need it. Salt, cinnamon, and vanilla extract make the cake taste amazing. Oil keeps the cake nice and moist — any neutral-flavored oil will work. Melted coconut oil works, too, but there will be a light coconut flavor in the baked cake. Sugar makes the cake moist, light, and delicious. I love a combination of white and brown sugar, but you can use one or the other. Since posting the recipe, some of our readers have asked whether or not we can reduce the sugar called for in the recipe.
You can, just keep in mind that the amount we specify will produce the moistest cake. Lots of carrots make this the best carrot cake. I like to hand grate my carrots since I prefer the texture, but you can use your food processor or buy pre-grated carrots from the store. When we first tested the cake, we scaled the number of carrots back to two cups since three cups just sounded a bit extreme.
After baking and letting it cool, we were a little disappointed. I know that some people love nuts and raisins in carrot cake, while others cannot stand to add them. These are completely optional, so go with what you love. Making the Cake Batter The method for this carrot cake recipe could not be simpler!
If you have a couple of bowls and can stir ingredients together then you can absolutely make this cake! As you can see from our recipe video, all you need to do is combine all the ingredients. Dry ingredients in one bowl, wet ingredients in another: I like to whisk my dry ingredients together in one bowl until they are well blended. Then I whisk all the wet ingredients together in another bowl.
Fold the dry and wet ingredients together: Then I switch to a rubber spatula or large spoon and fold the two — wet and dry ingredients — together until I don’t see any large streaks of flour. Add carrots, nuts, and raisins: When I’ve got the batter ready, I fold in the carrots, and if I’m using them, the nuts and raisins. Adding grated carrots to the cake batter. The frosting is actually the same one we used to top our Guinness Chocolate Cake. If you’re not into frostings or if you don’t have the ingredients on hand, try the cake as-is without any frosting at all. Or, sift a little bit of powdered sugar on top. When Adam and I were testing this recipe, we skipped the frosting the first couple of times and fell in love with the cake completely plain.