Do you have a traditional cake for birthday celebrations? Growing up, Carrot Cake was our family’s traditional birthday cake… for everyone except my oddball sister who always wanted Angel Food Cake with strawberries.
I am convinced this is the best carrot cake recipe on the planet because I have never had a carrot cake that tastes as good as this one.
I may be biased, but I highly doubt it.
When I got married, my husband raised his eyebrows at the idea of Carrot Cake. He wasn’t really sold on making it our traditional cake. And then I made one for his birthday.
Now for my son Owen… His birthday always rolls around and I really want to make chocolate cupcakes because he looks so cute with chocolate smeared all over his face. Ha ha.
For his last birthday I decided to make him chocolate cupcakes so that we could use these cute Owl Printables.
But then I decided to make a Carrot Cake, too!! Because no birthday is complete without Carrot Cake!
I honestly think what makes this recipe so awesome is that I always put 3 packed and heaping cups of shredded carrots. The extra carrots make it super sweet and moist.
This cake is definitely best cold and smothered with Cream Cheese Frosting.
- 2 cups flour
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. cinnamon
- 3 cups shredded carrots
- 1 cup cooking oil
- 4 eggs
- Grease and lightly four a baking pan.
- In a mixer bowl combine the first six ingredients.
- Add next 3 ingredients, beating with electric mixer till combined.
- Beat on medium speed for 2 minutes.
- Turn into pan.
- Bake at 350 F for 50-60 minutes (or until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean). Pull it out and let it cool for 10 minutes or so. Remove from pan and cool on wire rack.
- Frost with Cream Cheese Frosting.
Looking for some other sweet treats?
Double Chocolate Zucchini Muffins
Chocolate Caramel Cake Doughnuts
So far this hasn’t been great. Perhaps it’s because I’m in Australia and you have nicer kitchens and better behaved children in the US.
I decided to bake this cake because it turned up on my Facebook feed today. My boyfriend has been making me feel like less of a person because I don’t bake muffins and cookies like his ex wife did. Well, I can read and write above a year 6 level, she can’t. But hey, we all value different skills. So I took the recipe as a sign. I must bake this cake.
I’m not totally unfamiliar with cake baking. I got a C for home economics in year 10 (I am sure Mrs Beales passed me because I liked cats). But I’ve never baked a cake with oil in it before. I’m half Italian. The only oil I have ever had in my kitchen since birth is olive oil in a giant tin. I put it on salads. Nana would kill me if I put it in a cake, so I bought vegetable oil. I bought Crisco, it’s American. Don’t tell Nana.
I started the evening cooking by burning the kid’s spring rolls. My son has sensory processing disorder and he was having a multi sensory meltdown.
I mixed up the recipe. I have baking powder, what is baking soda? Isn’t that bicarb soda? Isn’t that baking powder. I used self raising flour. Oops. My son stole a carrot. Half of it is still on the lounge room floor. I had an exploded egg in the egg carton too which has oozed all over the fridge. I’m hoping if I ignore it, it will go away.
I greased the pan. I’ve never floured a pan. Skip that. My Ikea pan. I love Ikea. I knew I bought that pan for a reason. I saw SPD son disappear with it but he brought it back. All ok. Time to pour in the gloop. I didn’t flour it….. ahhhh he’s coated it with dust from the Gyprock. We’re building a new room. Crunchy. I washed it. Grease again. Let’s go.
Time for more conversions. Thanks Nigella Lawson for telling me that a US cup is 240ml and an Aussie one is 250. You’re getting ripped off! So I try and turn my oven to 176 degrees Celsius but it will only go to 175. Now I’m being ripped off.
So it’s baking. All good. But how long for? You didn’t say! I’ll check it in a half hour. Do the skewer thing.
I added walnuts too. One last thing? How do you make cream cheese frosting? Thanks for sharing your family recipe.
Jane! Oh man… sounds like you had a rough day! I’m so sorry! I hope it turned out better than it started. I meant to link back to my cream cheese frosting recipe. Now I have. I also updated the time. Hopefully you were able to figure that out on your own. Thanks for letting me know I was missing that in the instructions.
Tried this one last night! Yum!!!! Thank you for sharing. I’ll be making this again and again. I reduced the sugar though, 1 cup was more than enough. Delicious and easy. Look forward to trying more of your recipes. 🙂
Oh I’m so glad you liked it! It’s a family favorite and is definitely sweet enough that you could reduce the sugar! Hope you love some of our other recipes too!
Yum, i made this and it turned out amazing! I love this recipe as it doesn’t have 100 ingredients and its only a few steps. I cheated and did put a little less carrot and half a cup of pineapple and OMG it came out super moist. The second day its even better mmmm. Thanks for a great recipe, its a keeper 🙂
Yay! Susan, this totally made my day! I’m so glad you enjoyed this recipe and love that you added pineapple! What a great idea!! Thanks for coming back and sharing with me.