28 Carrot Cake Recipes You’ve Got to Try

When it comes to crowd-pleasing cakes, good, old-fashioned carrot cake is always at the top of the list. With layers of gently spiced cake, rich cream cheese frosting and delicious add-in options (buttery pecans, anyone?) carrot cake is the easy dessert that truly has it all. Better yet, the tried-and-true combination of flavors can be used to make a number of different treats, so you can just as easily enjoy ‘carrot cake’ for breakfast as you can for dessert. Don’t believe us? You’ll find everything from carrot cake baked oatmeal to easy-peasy Bundt cakes in this roundup—and you’ll love them all. There are, of course, plenty of traditional takes on the beloved dessert as well—starting with this one. The cake is spiced with a touch of cinnamon and nutmeg: the perfect complement to the natural sweetness of the carrots. Heavy cream whipped into the frosting makes it extra light and fluffy, perfect for finishing your sweet masterpiece.

Carrot cake lovers rejoice: your favorite cake has been transformed into a cookie. You'll get the same cinnamon-spiced cake slathered with tangy-sweet cream cheese frosting—but in portable and sharable cookie form. These treats are big, fluffy, tender and chewy, and they're about to become your new go-to dessert.

Whole wheat flour and Greek yogurt keep these cakes flavorful and moist while adding fiber and protein. Each cake gets 1 teaspoon of sweet cream cheese glaze — far fewer calories than the multiple tablespoons of frosting piled onto your typical cupcake.

Most people would agree that the cream cheese frosting is the best part of any carrot cake, so it makes perfect sense to replace it with a thick layer of creamy cheesecake. These two classic cakes make one showstopping mash-up dessert.