Carrot Cake Bars are delicious year-round and this recipe is so soft and tender with delicious cream cheese frosting on top.
Homemade Carrot Cake Bars
Whether you’re making these carrot cake bars for Easter or just for fun, you’re going to love how moist and perfectly flavored they are.
Our carrot cake bar recipe is made with flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, grated carrots, sugar, and vanilla for the perfect dessert recipe.
Why you’ll love them!
- Basic ingredients
- Super moist
- Spiced perfectly
What You Need for Carrot Cake Bars
- Flour: we only tested this recipe with all-purpose flour.
- Baking powder and soda: you need both leaveners for this recipe.
- Sugar and brown sugar: we used both brown and regular sugar.
- Shredded carrots: we like to shred our own whole carrots for this.
- Spices: classic carrot cake spices include cinnamon and nutmeg.
- Avocado oil: w love how neutral avocado oil is and it’s one of our favorites to use for baking.
Why avocado oil?
Avocado oil is a neutral oil that we prefer over vegetable oil. If you don’t have avocado, you can also use vegetable oil or sunflower seed oil.
Our Cream Cheese Frosting
Our vanilla cream cheese frosting recipe is perfect for these bars. Here’s what you need:
- Butter
- Cream cheese
- Powdered sugar
- Vanilla
Don’t want to make your own frosting?
Feel free to use your favorite store-bought cream cheese frosting or icing for this recipe to save time!
Piped Carrot Instructions
If you’re all about presentation like we are, here’s how we piped these adorable carrots.
Orange
- 2 tablespoons cream cheese frosting
- 1/2 teaspoon orange food gel
Green
- 1 tablespoon cream cheese frosting
- 1/2 teaspoon forest green food gel
Storage
Store leftover carrot cake bars in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3-5 days.
To freeze: if you’re hoping to freeze these bars for later, do not frost them. Let the cake cool completely and then tightly wrap it in tin foil. Freeze for up to 3 months.
Carrot Cake Bars
Ingredients
Wet Ingredients
- ¾ cup avocado oil
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- ¾ cup light brown sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs
Dry Ingredients
- 1.25 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1 cup shredded carrots ~2 medium carrots
Other
- 16 oz. cream cheese frosting here is the recipe we used
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350℉ and grease a 9×9-inch cake pan. Set aside.
- Mix the avocado oil, granulated sugar, and brown sugar in a large bowl. Add the vanilla extract and eggs into the bowl. Mix until well combined. Set aside.
- Place flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg, into a bowl and mix to combine.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Once combined, add the shredded carrots and mix to combine.
- Transfer the batter to the cake pan—bake for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Allow the cake to cool completely before frosting — about 2-3 hours.
- Top the bars with cream cheese frosting and slice them into 12 pieces.
Tips & Notes
- For the piped carrots: For the orange, combine 2 tablespoons of cream cheese frosting and 1/2 teaspoon of orange gel food coloring. For the green, I combine1 a tablespoon frosting with 1/2 teaspoon forest green gel food coloring,
