Carrot Cake
Whole carrots (not pre-shredded). Shredding your own carrots when making carrot cake is so important. Don’t buy pre-shredded.
Eggs. I always use large eggs for baking.
Oil. There is no butter in this carrot cake recipe, just oil and it makes the carrot cake amazing. I like to use lightly flavored vegetable oil. Vegetable oil will keep the carrot cake moist.
Sugar. Granulated sugar is fine here.
All-purpose flour. Try to find unbleached flour if you can.
Walnuts (optional) for the topping only. Depending on how classic you want the carrot cake, you can add these or leave them out.
Vanilla Extract. Look for a high-quality extract. Pure vanilla extract works best for this carrot cake recipe.
Cinnamon. Ground cinnamon and carrots are a favorite pairing. You cannot have carrot cake without this spice.
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
Now I think most people will agree that the best part about classic carrot cake is the cream cheese frosting. Here is how to make it:
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 this carrot cake, 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 classic carrot cake (from scratch)
You only need one bowl. Just follow all of the steps below and you will be rewarded with an amazing carrot 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 all of your 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.
Next, you will add your wet ingredients and stir it all together. I like to use large eggs when making this carrot cake recipe. I use a handheld mixer for this part but you could use a whisk or stand mixer.
Then you will shred your carrots on the fine side of a grater and then add that right into your batter. Please be sure to read why we do this below. It makes all the difference in the carrot cake’s final product.
Then add your freshly shredded carrots to your 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 carrot cake: Place the carrot cake into a pre-heated 350-degree oven for about 30 minutes.
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