Casual carrot cake

I boasted about making a fancy version of this cake in November for my Dad’s birthday. Let me tell you, that was still fantastic and there is absolutely always a time and place for a party cake.

And on the other side of this, sometimes you want cake, but you don’t have a crowd to share it with, and you don’t care to spend a ton of time on it — enter this casual carrot cake.

Molly Baz’s Carrot Loaf Cake via Basically/BA

It’s made in a single layer in a loaf pan, but still has the thick, creamy frosting you expect from carrot cake. The batter and frosting are actually all mixed by hand too, so there’s no need for special equipment. Also, a fun surprise, there’s cream cheese in the batter which is just a good idea in general now that I’ve done it.

Another reason I love this cake is because it doesn’t have all of the ingredients carrot cake normally does. Like, of course the nuts and raisins and shit add value, but they’re also a pain to procure if you don’t keep them on-hand. I just appreciate that this achieves the carrot cake goal without fuss.

I followed the recipe exactly because Molly knows all in my book, except I cheated and bought pre-shredded carrots because I’m not perfect. Considering how good this was even with my flawed ingredient, I can only imagine how much better it is with freshly shredded sweet carrots.