Simple Carrot Cake
This carrot cake is moist, soft, and perfectly spiced, made with grated carrots, brown sugar, and fall spices, and topped with a cream cheese frosting.
Ingredients
Carrot cake:
- 2 cups Flour
- 2 teaspoon Cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon Nutmeg
- 2 teaspoon Baking soda
- 1 teaspoon Baking powder
- 4 Eggs
- 1 cup Granulated sugar
- 1 cup Brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla extract
- 1 cup Vegetable oil
- 2.5 cups Grated carrots
- 1 teaspoon Kosher salt
Cream cheese frosting:
- 115 g Butter soft
- 230 g Cream cheese
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla extract
- 3 cups Powder sugar
- ½ teaspoon Kosher salt
Instructions
Make the carrot cake:
- Preheat an oven to 180c (350f) and prep two 8 inch baking pans with parchment paper.
- Into a medium mixing bowl, add the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Mix with a whisk until combined and set aside.
- Peel and finely grate the carrots. Into a big mixing bowl, add the eggs, vegetable oil, brown sugar, sugar, vanilla extract, and the grated carrots. Mix until well combined.
- Add the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Don’t overmix the batter!
- Divide the mixture into two 8-inch baking pans, we suggest using cake strips for even baking. (weight the batter for better results) and bake in a preheated oven for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean. Let the cake cool completely before frosting.
Make the cream cheese frosting:
- Make the cream cheese frosting: into a large bowl add room temperature butter and mix with a hand mixer or a stand mixer until the butter is light and fluffy.
- Add the cream cheese and mix until smooth.
- Add ½ of the powder sugar at a time (you don’t want to be in a powder sugar cloud).
- Add a pinch of salt, and the vanilla extract and mix well until smooth.
For the assembly:
- Pipe a small dollop of the frosting on the surface that you will frost on. Lay the first cake layer over the frosting dot.
- Pipe ½ of the frosting on top of the cake layer and spread an even layer.
- Top with the second cake layer and frost the cake.
- For decoration, we like toasting either pecans or walnuts, chop them, and sprinkle the nuts around the edges of the cake. (see in the video)
Notes
Use room temperature ingredients. It is important that you use room-temperature ingredients like eggs, cream cheese, and butter. This step ensures that your mixture mixes into a homogenous mixture and bakes perfectly. you don’t want to place cold batter into the oven.
Don’t overmix the batter, you don’t want to develop the gluten in the flour. This step ensures you have moist cake and not dense and dry cake.
Make sure that your butter and cream cheese is at room temperature. An hour or two before making this cake, take the butter and the cream cheese out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature. They should be soft to the touch. If your butter and cream cheese are too cold, it will be harder to mix and there will be lumps of butter in the frosting.
Use cake strips! Cake strips give you even and perfectly baked cake layers. Click here for the amazon link.
Measure your flour correctly! When measuring your flour, avoid scooping it with a measuring cup. Instead, stir the flour with a spoon to create as many air pockets as possible, and spoon it into your measuring cup. Finally, level it with a back of a knife.
Line your baking pan with parchment paper! This step helps the cake to release easily from the pan.
Before you start to make this recipe, measure and prepare your ingredients so the baking process will go smoothly and easily.
If you want to make these into cupcakes, check out our carrot cake cupcakes recipe.
Nutrition
Calories: 530kcalCarbohydrates: 83gProtein: 5gFat: 34gSaturated Fat: 12gPolyunsaturated Fat: 11gMonounsaturated Fat: 8gTrans Fat: 1gCholesterol: 95mgSodium: 657mgPotassium: 98mgFiber: 1gSugar: 35gVitamin A: 577IUVitamin C: 1mgCalcium: 71mgIron: 1mg
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!