Make Ahead Easy Cheesy Baked Carrot Casserole

This delicious easy cheesy baked carrot casserole can be assembled the day before it’s baked, and would be perfect as one of your Christmas side dishes!

We recently celebrated Thanksgiving here in Canada.

Unlike the easiest turkey dinner ever, this year I decided to cook up a big traditional Thanksgiving dinner.

I spent an entire day in the kitchen prepping things ahead, and brought my Instagram followers along. It was so much fun to “chat” with them on stories as I cooked.  “We” made bacon wrapped stuffing, prepped the turkey, and whipped up strawberry cream cheese icing for vanilla cake.

But, the most requested recipe of all was the baked carrot casserole recipe I made that day.

Grated Baked Carrot Casserole Recipe

This recipe came from a sweet lady from our church. She has gone to glory now, and I loved discovering her printed email she sent me when I requested this yummy recipe.

I love how you can assemble this Thanksgiving or Christmas side dish recipe a day ahead of time, and then just bake it the day of the big meal.

Ingredients for Cheesy Carrot Casserole:

• 3 cups grated carrots
• 1 cup diced celery
• 1 cup soft bread crumbs
• 1 cup cubed mild Cheddar or Jack Cheese
• 1/2 cup melted butter
• 1/2 cup walnuts (optional, I omitted these)
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 tsp. salt

Directions

Combine all ingredients in a bowl. Place in a large greased baking dish and bake covered for 40 minutes at 350 degrees. Uncover and bake for 5 minutes more.

To make the carrot casserole recipe ahead of time, assemble all the ingredients, place in the baking dish, and cover it with plastic wrap. Place it into the refrigerator until you are ready to bake it. Once you are ready to bake it, remove the plastic wrap, cover with foil, and bake according to directions.

Additional thoughts

The pictures of this yummy Thanksgiving or Christmas side dish don’t really do it justice. As the guests were waiting to be seated, I quickly took this casserole upstairs to the window with the best light to snap a picture. I literally snapped 2 pictures and that was it…

To serve this dish, I scooped it into a pretty china serving bowl. It was pretty…AND delicious. But…no pictures of that!;)

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