Vegan Carrot Cake Bars

These vegan carrot cake bars are easy to make, moist, loaded with caramelized carrots, perfectly spiced, and topped with a crumb topping made with pecans, cinnamon and brown sugar. Gluten-free Nutfree options

Love carrot cake? You GOT to try these Carrot cake bars! They are moist and delicious and don’t need any frosting or icing which makes them perfect for bringing to a picnic or potluck.

The secret to making great carrot cake is caramelizing the carrots before adding them to the batter.

So many carrot cakes out their taste of anything but carrots. Not this one! Carrot lovers will be all over this. Caramelizing the shredded carrots with some maple syrup really brings out their flavor and natural sweetness. Trust me, this hack takes any carrot cake to the next level.

Raw carrots when added to the batter sometimes cook down just enough to taste like cooked or steamed carrots. Precooking the carrots and coating them with sticky maple syrup mix, allows them to add a roasted caramelized flavor without having to bake the cake for an hour. Baking this batter in a wide pan speeds up the bake time, and adding a simple topping ensures that the cake stays super moist. This is especially important for vegan i.e eggless cakes as they lose more moisture compared to with egg cakes.

I like to top these cake bars with a mixture of brown sugar, pecans, and cinnamon which takes this bake more into a coffee cake/crumb cake direction. So comfy tasting.

why will you love these carrot cake bars

• they are a perfect bite size treat
• they are super moist because of the streusel style topping
• the caramelized carrots take this cake to the next level!
• they satisfy all the carrot cake craving
• they can be made gluten-free , Nutfree
• Dalana, my assistant says these cake bars are the best carrot cake she’s had!

More carrot cake inspired recipes:

• Vegan Carrot Cake Oatmeal Cookies
• Vegan Carrot Cake Baked Oatmeal
• Vegan Carrot Cake Bites Recipe
• Carrot Cake Chia Pudding. Vegan Gluten-free Recipe
• Instant Pot Gajar Halwa; Vegan Carrot Halwa
• Vegan Pumpkin Carrot Bread

If you’ve cooked My Indian recipes and have trouble finding spices, I made a 16 Spice set with my favorite spice shop. World spice is a local family owned shop with sustainable organic spices. The spice set has small bottles and also has my very own Garam masala blend! You can get this spice set here.

Ingredients:

• For the caramelized carrots, we  sautee shredded carrots with maple syrup, sugar and cinnamon in a small mount of vegan butter or oil
• the batter is made with a blend of all-purpose flour and almond flour
• flax egg is used as a stand-in for regular egg
• as a sweetener, I use regular cane sugar
• a mix of oil and nondairy milk are added for moisture
• for the rise, we add a mixture of baking powder and baking soda
• carrot cake spices: vanilla, cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg
• salt brings out the sweetness
• I like adding the zest of a small orange or half a lime to this
• chopped dates add some sweetness and chew
• for the topping, we blend brown sugar with cinnamon and chopped pecans

Tips:

• Make a frosting: This cake is really moist so it doesn’t really need more topping. If you like, you can add a cream cheese drizzle on top. I make a quick frosting with ¼ cup of vegan cream cheese, a few drops of vanilla and 2 tablespoons of  maple syrup. Mix really well until it is a smooth, thick frosting consistency then drizzle all over.
• Feel free to add in some chopped crystalized ginger or raisins to the batter, if you like that in your carrot cake
• Nutfree : omit the pecans and almond flour. Use 2 tablespoons more all purpose flour instead of almond flour

How to Make Carrot Cake Bars

Make your caramelized carrots: add all of the ingredients under carrots to a skillet over medium heat and mix really well until the butter melts, and the maple syrup and sugar coat the carrots.

Continue to cook for 13-15 minutes or until the carrots don’t feel liquidity. The carrots will keep leaking out moisture into the mixture so you just want the maple to get absorbed into the carrots and the excess moisture to evaporate.

It shouldn’t be absolutely dry but it should also not have any kind of film of water on the skillet. Then take off heat.

Make the cake batter: In a bowl mix all the dry ingredients, mix the flours,  baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, and salt and mix well.

To the bowl of the flour ingredients add the flax egg, sugar, oil, vanilla and ¾ cup nondairy milk. Mix until almost combined, if the mixture is too thick add in another tablespoon of milk. you want it to be like muffin batter, you don’t want it too thin like a pancake batter but slightly thick

Then add in the dates, zest.

.Then fold in 3/4 of the caramelized carrots,

transfer to parchment lined 8×8 or 9×9 inch baking dish. Even it out. Top with the remaining carrot mixture.

In a bowl mix the cinnamon sugar topping by mixing the sugar, cinnamon and pecans. Then sprinkle this all over the batter. Then bake at 350F (170C) for 35-40 minutes.

Check at 35-minute mark, if the toothpick comes out clean or almost clean then it’s done.

Let it sit for 10 minutes before removing from the pan , then cool another 10-15 mins then  slice and serve.

Make this gluten free

For making these carrot cake bars gluten-free, use

• ½ cup of almond flour
• ½ cup of oat flour
• ¼ cup potato starch
• And add ½ a cup of milk instead of ¾ cup and add  ¼ cup of club soda.