This is smitten kitchen blueberry muffins favorite recipe 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.