It may be a little late, but you could use the helper function time() to get the current timestamp. I tried this function and it did the job, no need for classes :).
use Carbon\Carbon; // You need to import Carbon
$current_time = Carbon::now()->toDayDateTimeString(); // Wed, May 17, 2017 10:42 PM
$current_timestamp = Carbon::now()->timestamp; // Unix timestamp 1495062127
In addition, this is how to change datetime format for given date & time, in blade:
\{\{\Carbon\Carbon::parse($dateTime)->format('D, d M \'y, H:i')}}