Best Ever Carrot Cake Loaf

Today we are making this deliciously moist carrot cake loaf! It's loaded with delicious add ins that create the best texture and topped with a decadent cream cheese icing.

If you're looking for an easy and delicious dessert, carrot cake loaf is the perfect choice! It's just as delicious as traditional carrot cake, but has all the beautiful easiness of bread.

Much like pumpkin bread and banana bread, making carrot bread gives you a refreshing take on carrots! It's moist and dense and deliciously sweet.

I have tried several attempts at making a carrot cake loaf recipe, that all have failed miserably. This one, however, has made it all worth it.

I am all about making things easy, so I tend to bake a lot with a loaf pan. There's something about putting a cake mix into a loaf pan that makes it feel easier and gives you the excuse to eat it for breakfast.

I mean, this loaf is loaded with good for you ingredients like carrots, raisins and pecans. So there's that.

That totally makes it breakfast worthy? Right?

I say yes!

Jump to:

• Ingredients
• Instructions
• Baking time
• Substitutions
• Top Tips
• Equipment
• Recipe

Ingredients

For this recipe, we'll break the ingredients into 2 parts, the carrot cake loaf and the cream cheese frosting.

For the carrot cake loaf:

• Flour: All purpose flour is best for this recipe
• Baking powder
• Ground cinnamon
• Ginger
• Nutmeg
• Salt
• Eggs: The eggs should be at room temperature. This will help eggs mix better with the rest of the ingredients and allow the carrot bread to rise better
• White granulated sugar
• Vegetable oil
• Vanilla extract: If you can get your hands on pure vanilla extract, do it! It adds a delicious flavor that's unbeatable. That being said, if you don't have vanilla, this carrot cake loaf will still be delicious.
• Freshly grated carrots
• Pecans: The nuts are optional, but absolutely delicious in this recipe. You can also substitute walnuts instead. Roasting them gives them an enhanced yummy nutty flavor, but raw is perfectly fine too.
• Raisins

For the Frosting

• Cream cheese: Softened at room temperature. This will make it blend easier and have no lumps.
• Unsalted butter: Softened at room temperature. It'll blend way easier.
• Powdered sugar: AKA confectioners sugar
• Heavy cream: Milk will work fine as well
• Vanilla extract

See recipe card for quantities.

Instructions

Making the Carrot Cake Loaf step by step. Start by preheating your oven to 350 degrees.

Grease you loaf pan and set aside.

To make your carrot cake mixture, start by mixing all of your dry ingredients into a medium bowl.

In a separate large bowl combine your sugar and room temperature eggs.

Whisk the egg mixture until it's thick and creamy.

This is where an electric mixer or immersion blender with the whisk attachment comes in handy.

If you don't have an electric mixer, hand beating it will work, it'll just take more time and energy.

Now add in your oil and vanilla into the mixture and incorporate well.

Slowly add your flour mixture into your egg mixture and mix well.

Now add in your shredded carrots, chopped pecans, and raisins (if using) and fold into your mixture.

Finally, pour your batter into a greased loaf pan or one lined with parchment paper. Bake for 1 hour.

You can make your cream cheese icing white your bread is baking, or after your loaf has cooled completely.

You don't want your scrumptious icing melting off the bread loaf!

To make the icing, simply mix all of the frosting ingredients together with an electric mixer.

Once your carrot cake is completely cool, you can ice your loaf with the freshly made frosting.

You can top off your loaf with a few pecans if you like.

Baking time

When using a typical 5x9 bread loaf pan this recipe takes 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes to bake thoroughly. Check for doneness by testing with a toothpick.

If you want to turn your loaf into muffins or mini carrot cakes, you could easily bake this exact recipe in a muffin tin, but increase the oven's temperature to 350 degrees and only bake for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Substitutions

I already mentioned most of the substitutions above, but here's a quick rundown in case you skipped ahead.

Nuts: Instead of pecans, you can use other nuts like walnuts or no nuts at all. Although they do add a great texture and flavor.

You can toast them yourself but spreading them on a sheet pan and popping them in the oven or toaster oven. You could even use the broiler in a pinch, just don't burn them!

Oil: Instead of vegetable oil, you can swap out canola oil, corn oil or even safflower oil. Just make sure it's a flavorless oil and avoid butter.

And while I love cooking with coconut oil, it'll change the texture of this bread when you stick it in the fridge for storage, which is necessary if you use the cream cheese frosting. It's also another reason to avoid butter as well, as it'll make the cake loaf harder when cold.

Spices: The spices add a lovely flavor but feel free to leave out what you don't have or can't use.

Raisins: Add a good tangy and sweet flavor, but again, totally optional.

Top Tips

For this recipe, the star of our show is the carrot of course! After all, this is carrot cake bread.

You'll want to make sure to peel your carrots and grate them before you start mixing your ingredients.

You can use a standard box grater, but my personal favorite method is to use the shred blade on my food processor.

If you don't own a food processor, you are missing out! I use mine nearly everyday to cut fruits and veggies. It saves an insane amount of time. I use and LOVE this one.

Let your eggs warm up to room temperature before mixing with your sugar to create a better texture for the base of your loaf.

Equipment

The right tools can make baking so much easier! If you have a food processor, use that to grate up your carrots. It'll save a ton of time.

In a pinch, you can use a hand grater.

Your welcome to use a stand mixer for this recipe, however I found a basic electric hand mixer easy worked well and I just find it easier to clean.