Carrot Cake

Recipe from Jaclyn Bell

This is a nicely spiced, sweet carrot cake, whose author uses less oil than most recipes, instead substituting apple sauce, preventing it from turning out oily. She suggests finishing it with her cream cheese frosting. I personally like it plain with more fresh apple sauce on top.

Yields:

16 servings

Time Required:

40 mins. prep. time
35 mins. cooking time

Ingredients:

2 cups¹ flour (scoop and level to measure)
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
2 tsp. ground cinnamon²
¼ tsp. ground³ nutmeg
¼ tsp. ground ginger
4 eggs
¾ cup (175ml) vegetable oil
½ cup unsweetened apple sauce
1 cup (200g) sugar
¾ cup packed brown sugar (break up any clumps)
2 tsp. vanilla extract
3 cups (348g) finely grated carrots
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)
Cream Cheese Frosting (optional)

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

Butter two 9" round cake pans, line with parchment paper, butter parchment paper, dust parchment paper with flour, shake out excess.⁴ Line pans with water-soaked cake strips⁵ if you have them.

In a mixing bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger.

In a large mixing bowl, using an electric mixer, blend together vegetable oil, apple sauce, eggs, sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla extract.

Add dry ingredients, and mix until combined. Mix in grated carrots just to evenly distribute. Divide mixture evenly into 2 prepared cake pans.

Bake in preheated oven for 33-38 mins. until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean.

Remove from oven and allow to cool 10 mins. in cake pan, then run a knife around edges of cakes, and invert into a wire rack to cool completely.

Cook's Notes:

I'll bet this cake does well with a variety of frostings and decorations, but, at this writing, have yet to experiment. Without those, it looks rather plain, but certainly is delicious.

¹ Cups, tablespoons, and teaspoons are as defined in US Customary Units, not to be confused with differing British imperial, "legal", "coffee", Commonwealth of Nations, Canadian, Latin American, Japanese, Russian, or Dutch definitions — further proof that everyone needs the metric system.

² After a lifetime of not knowing one cinnamon from another, I learned that true cinnamon comes only from the inner bark of the "Cinnamonum verum" tree native to Sri Lanka, and has milder, more interesting, citrusy flavour compared to bulk, grocery-store cinnamon, which is made from cheaper, harsher-tasting non-verum Cinnamonum species grown largely in southern China, Vietnam, and India, and which technically isn't cinnamon at all, but rather is properly called cassia. I'm unsure whether favouring true cinnamon for this recipe would improve it noticeably, but the possibility bears pondering.

³ Your cooking will be improved by acquiring a spice grinder, and thereafter buying/storing only whole spices, grinding only as/when needed. Ground spices go flavourless quickly, even in tightly sealed jars.

⁴ This cake can also be made in a 9"x13" dish, just increase baking time to 40-50 mins. until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, or recipe can be halved and baked in a 8"x8" dish or just one 9" round pan. (Bake time should be the same.)

⁵ Many butter or oil-based layer cakes benefit from encircling the cake pan's sides with an insulating cake pan strip, which will give you a more-even crumb and texture throughout the cake, as well as making the sides less likely to over-brown. Cake strips can be bought as specialty goods, or you can DIY using old towels, cotton fabric scraps, or even paper towels — provided they're soaked in cold water. (Detailed tutorial.)

Taken from: https://www.cookingclassy.com/best-ever-carrot-cake/, as Jaclyn Bell's April 9, 2020 recipe. Thank you!

Collected and re-published at http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/recipes/carrot-cake.html by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> on Dec. 19, 2025. Individual recipes are free from copyright. Share and enjoy!

(If I have any copyright title in my own very minor contributions to this page — not my intention — they were created in 2025 by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> and licensed for use under CC0. I have thereby waived all copyright, compilation copyright, and related or neighbouring rights to this work. This work is published from: United States of America.)