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Carrot cake has a tendency to veer into maximalist territory. If you let it, it can become a multi-layer affair with not just shredded carrots, but pineapple and raisins and even shredded coconut.

But this simple carrot loaf cake is not like that.

It is carrot cake stripped down to its essentials.

This minimalist carrot loaf cake is firm and dense and downright sensible.

It’s made with pantry ingredients: butter, brown sugar, shredded carrots, eggs, yogurt, walnuts, spices. And, even better, if your pantry is stocked slightly different from mine, it’s flexible.

If you don’t have brown sugar, you can use granulated sugar.

If you don’t have plain yogurt, you can use milk or buttermilk or sour cream.

If you don’t have walnuts, you can swap in pecans or pistachios or leave out the nuts entirely.

I particularly like the combination of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cardamom here. They play nicely with the sweetness in carrots.

But, again, the spices you use are flexible.

Depending on what spices you have rattling around your pantry and your personal flavor preferences, you could go simple and just use cinnamon, or get creative and throw in allspice or cloves or play around with blends that I think of as sleeper baking spices like Chinese five spice (which I use in my cranberry Dutch baby) or garam masala.

I’m calling it a cake, but it’s a a cake in the same way that banana bread is a cake (and if you’re in the market for banana bread recipes, you might try this brown sugar oat flour banana walnut bread or this streusel-topped banana bread with chocolate and pecans). And you could make an argument that it should, in that manner, be called carrot bread.

(My own feeling is that once you’ve slathered it in cream cheese frosting, it’s firmly in cake territory.)

And you can make this without any equipment more specialized than a box grater. It’s quicker to shred the carrots in a food processor, but it isn’t necessary. And grating a couple of carrots by hand isn’t too onerous.

The rest the batter comes together in a couple of minutes.

You can brown the butter when you melt it, if you’re the sort of baker who likes to be extra (I am, but I am also, sometimes, too lazy to bother).

The batter is thick, and the cake itself is dense and rustic by design. This is home food.

This carrot loaf cake doesn’t need frosting.

It’s perfectly lovely on it’s own. Especially if you want to enjoy it as a not-too-sweet breakfast.

But like just about any carrot cake, it’s good with a cream cheese frosting.

This particular cream cheese frosting is rich with a subtle tang that cuts through the sweetness.

The frosting comes together in about 30 seconds in a stand mixer or with a hand mixer. But you can also stir it together by hand—it’ll just take a little longer to get it smooth.

And wait until the cake if totally cool before slathering on the frosting (or it will slide right off). The waiting is the hardest part.