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Sliced Carrot Cake on wire rack.
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Carrot Loaf Cake

Carrot Loaf Cake is super simple but fantastically soft and moist. An easy, and exceptionally tasty treat, perfectly topped with cream cheese icing.
Course Sweets
Cuisine British
Keyword cream cheese icing, easy loaf cake, pound cake
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour
Total Time 1 hour 20 minutes
Servings 12 Slices
Calories 414kcal
Author Donna

Ingredients

For the Carrot Loaf Cake:

  • 160 ml Vegetable Oil
  • 3 Medium Eggs
  • 225 g Soft Light Brown Sugar
  • 1 teaspoon Vanilla Essence
  • 190 g Self Raising Flour Plus 1 tablespoon to dust the raisins
  • 1 teaspoon Bicarbonate of Soda
  • 1 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon Ground Ginger
  • 1 teaspoon Ground Nutmeg
  • 1 teaspoon Ground Mixed Spice
  • 220 g Carrot Topped and bottomed, peeled, and finely grated
  • 125 g Raisins

For the Cream Cheese Icing:

  • 75 g Unsalted Butter At room temperature
  • 75 g Icing Sugar
  • 150 g Soft Cheese Philadelphia is best

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 160 degrees (fan-assisted) and grease and/or line a loaf tin.
  • Toss the raisins in a tbsp of flour and leave to one side.
  • Whisk the oil, eggs, sugar, and vanilla together for 2-3 minutes (longer by hand) until the colour has lightened slightly and the mixture is smooth.
  • Sift in the flour, bicarb, nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, and mixed spice, and whisk for a few minutes until even.
  • Whisk in the carrots.
  • Tip in the raisins (it’s fine if flour from the bowl goes in too) and stir through carefully until evenly distributed.
  • Pour into the prepared loaf tin and bake for 1 hour (first check after 50 minutes or so).
  • After this time if the centre is still underbaked, cover the tin loosely with foil and return to the oven for a further 10 minutes.
  • When the cake is cooked remove it from the oven, and if possible leave it to cool completely in the tin.
  • To make the cream cheese icing beat together the butter and icing sugar until soft, even with room temp butter, this can take a while. Then, carefully beat in the soft cheese until all the big lumps are gone.
  • Once the cake is cool, carefully remove it from the tin and roughly spread on the cream cheese icing.

Notes

  • I use a large loaf tin like this one and reusable baking paper to line (affiliate links).
  • If after 70 minutes the cake isn’t quite cooked, consider turning the oven up slightly and returning, still covered in foil. But, check every 5mins from them on. How runny your mixture is can depend on how fresh the carrots were, so don’t worry if it’s ready after 50 mins, or if it takes much longer.