Easy Classic Carrot Cake

Everyone should have an easy, moist, and delicious simple carrot cake recipe you can make when the urge strikes. This classic carrot cake is just that and it is perfect for all occasions.

This is my absolute favorite recipe for carrot cake and one that I have been making for years! It is one of those passed down family recipes and it always comes out amazing.

This recipe is an old-fashioned recipe with no pineapples, raisins, or nuts and it has a delicious cream cheese frosting and a wonderful moist crumb. If you grew up eating carrot cake, you know how amazing it tastes, and we can all agree that cream cheese frosting makes it.

This cake is moist and fluffy with the perfect texture and it is 100 percent kid-approved and reader-approved. In fact, it has been made for weddings, kid's birthdays, and holiday events.

It is also quick to make and the flavor is like a sugar cake of heavenly goodness with the carrots blending right into the batter.

I will walk you through all the steps to make the best carrot cake that everyone will love!

What You Will Need

Carrot Cake

• Whole carrots (not pre-shredded). Shredding your own carrots is so important. Don't buy pre-shredded.
• Eggs. I always use large eggs for baking.
• Oil. There is no butter in this cake recipe, just oil and it makes the cake amazing and moist. I like to use lightly flavored vegetable oil.
• Sugar. Granulated sugar is fine here. If you want a little extra richness, you can add a little brown sugar in place of the regular sugar.
• All-purpose flour. Try to find unbleached flour if you can.
• Walnuts (optional) for the topping only. Depending on how classic you want, you can add these or leave them out.
• Vanilla Extract. Look for a high-quality extract. Pure vanilla extract works best.
• Cinnamon. Ground cinnamon and carrots are a favorite pairing.
• Baking soda
• Baking powder

Pro-Tip:

Make sure your baking soda and baking powder are fresh. If it has been sitting in the pantry for a while it may not be good anymore and you should invest in new ones.

Cream cheese frosting

• Room temperature cream cheese. You can bring the cream cheese to room temperature by placing it on the counter about 1 hour before you use it.
• Room temperature unsalted butter. Same as the cream cheese above, place it on the counter about 1 hour before you are ready to use it.
• Powdered sugar. When making the frosting, I like to sift the powdered sugar to make sure there are no lumps. This is totally up to you.
• Vanilla extract.

How To Make Carrot Cake

You only need one bowl. Just follow all of the steps below and you will be rewarded with an amazing cake.

• Prepare 3 - 8 inch cake pans (or 2- 9 inch cake pans). For this three-layer carrot cake, you want to make sure to oil and prep those cake pans! The better your cake pans are prepared, the easier the carrot cake will be to remove from the cake pans after baking.
• Whisk dry ingredients: into a large bowl. This is the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. This allows the dry ingredients in the carrot cake to be well incorporated before adding in the other ingredients.
• Add wet ingredients: and stir it all together. I like to use large eggs when making this recipe. I use a handheld mixer for this part but you could use a whisk or stand mixer.
• Shred your carrots: on the fine side of a grater and then add that right into your batter. You want to shred your own carrots since it will add more moisture to the cake. I like to shred my carrots with a box grater and use the fine shred side. I find that the coarse shred side is just too thick and it leaves large shreds in the batter.
• Combine shredded carrots with the batter: and mix until just incorporated.
• Pour: Pour the batter into the cake pans making sure there is an even amount in all of them.
• Bake: Place the cake into a pre-heated 350-degree oven for about 30 minutes.

• Cool: Allow the cake to cool for about 15 minutes before adding the cream cheese frosting.
• Frost: I used the naked cake frosting method for this cake. Lots of my cakes like my Moist Chocolate Cake, Basil Cake, or Vanilla Almond Cake, I have lots of workarounds to compensate for my lack of decorating skills 🙂

As you can see it all works out even with limited decorating. The beautiful part of this cake is when you slice through it and see those beautiful layers!

Look at the closeup (below) of one of the slices of carrot cake! Those layers are why I love using three 8-inch cake pans instead of 2 9-inch pans.

Variations

• Add Nuts: If you love pecans or walnuts, you can certainly add them right into the batter if you prefer.
• Add raisins: The same as the nuts, just add them right into the batter.
• Make it into cupcakes: You can easily make this into cupcakes. You can also make this into mini carrot cake cupcakes.

FAQS

Storing

I like to make this cake ahead of time and store it with parchment paper between the layers until I am ready to frost it.

Once the cake is frosted, it will store well on the counter loosely covered or under a cake dome for one day. After that, I like to refrigerate it to keep it fresh for up to one week. Make sure the cake is covered when you refrigerate it to prevent it from drying out.

What to serve with this

I love serving this classic carrot cake during the holidays. Here are some ideas:

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