One bowl moist easy Carrot Cake Recipe with Cream Cheese Icing
This one bowl carrot cake recipe with cream cheese icing is incredibly moist and insanely easy to whip up. Carrot cake is delicious any time of the year – let’s be honest. But I find there’s something so comforting to have a slice of this softly spiced cake with a big mug of hot chocolate while watching the rain safely from a warm blanket on a cold evening. Here in Ireland, it rains an excessive amount so I always have LOTS of opportunities for cake in snuggly blankets. I try to always see some sort of silver lining, although my waistline would disagree! 😉
I’m sure that you figured it out from the title but just in case you missed it, this carrot cake recipe is made from start to finish with… you guessed it, ONE mixing bowl! (And the cake tins of course :P) Seriously though, even though 2020 has given a lot of us all the time in the world… is there any need to spend more time than necessary faffing about in the kitchen when you can whip together a super moist and tasty cake like this so easily?! I vote absolutely fucking not.
So tell me how to make this carrot cake already!
So how does this work? Well, quite simply you start with all the wet ingredients along with the grated carrot in the large mixing bowl, minus the apple sauce. Mix these together briefly and then add in the dry ingredients, followed immediately by the apple sauce. You can replace the apple sauce with crushed pineapple if you prefer, its a very popular addition, as shown in Sally’s Baking Addiction’s recipe which is exactly where I took and tweaked the recipe from! After you mix together all the ingredients, you then pour the batter into two lined and greased tins and baked.
When cool, make the cream cheese icing. This starts off by beating the butter until pale and creamy. The full fat cream cheese is then added and beaten again till smooth. It’s very important that you use full fat cream cheese when making this icing, if you use low fat it’s likely to come out pretty runny and not the spreadable consistency you’re looking for. Next, add in the rest of the ingredients and beat well until fluffy and smooth.
Spiced Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Icing
Equipment
- Peeler
- Grater
- Large mixing bowl
- Whisk
- Rubber spatula
- Two 20cm (8inch) round cake tins
- Electric mixer/whisk
- Zester
Ingredients
Carrot Cake
- 3 small carrots
- 240 ml vegetable oil
- 4 whole eggs
- 1 cup unsweetened apple sauce, bought or homemade
- 312 grams plain flour
- 200 grams demrara sugar
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp mixed spice
- 50 grams chopped pecans optional
Cream Cheese Icing
- 75 grams butter room temperature
- 150 grams cream cheese
- 450 grams icing sugar
- 1 zest of orange
- 1 squeeze lemon juice
- 20 ml cream
Instructions
Carrot Cake
- Preheat oven to 170°c or 340°f.
- Peel the carrots and grate them.
- In the large mixing bowl, add the carrots, eggs and oil. Whisk until just combined.
- Add in the flour, raising agents, spices, apple sauce and nuts. Whisk gently until everything is combined and no lumps of flour remain.
- Switch to a rubber spatula and scrape down the sides of the bowl and mix a little to ensure everything is fully combined.
- Line and grease both cake tins and divide the cake batter between the two.
- Pop into the preheated oven and bake for 25-30 minutes or until fully cooked. Check if the cake is done by inserting a skewer into the middle. If it comes out clean, it's ready.
- Allow to cool before icing.
Cream Cheese Icing
- Place the room temperature butter into the mixing bowl and with your electric mixer/beater, beat the butter until it turns pale and creamy, it will take a few minutes.
- Scrape down the bowl. Add in the cream cheese and orange zest and beat well for another minute until no lumps remain.
- Scrape down the bowl again and add in the icing sugar and a small squeeze of lemon juice.
- Beat well to remove any icing sugar lumps. Add in the cream and beat for another 20-30 seconds.
- To assemble the cake; spread 1/3 of the icing on top of one of the cooled cake layers. Turn the second cake upside down and place on top, with the bottom, flat layer as the top of the cake. Spread another third of the icing on top of the cake and use the remaining third to either coat the sides or put into a piping bag to pipe along the edge of the top. Sprinkle some pecans and cake crumbs on top of the icing.
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