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Vegan Carrot Cake Recipe. Vegan Carrot Cake Quick bread loaf with Cashew Cream Frosting. Moist, spiced with Cinnamon and Cardamom, full of carrots. Low oil. Soyfree Palmoil-free. Pin this Recipe Jump to Recipe
This week is amazingly busy. I was planning up the posts last week and realized that both Holi and Easter are this week. Carrots and Mangoes were my choice to appear on the blog this week. So lets get started with this super moist Carrot Cake.
This carrot cake is loaded with shredded carrots and pureed carrots. All that carrot with the spices like cinnamon and cardamom (because Cardamom!), some ginger, and a creamy cream cheese style cashew vanilla frosting make this an irresistible loaf. The loaf is a carrot cake quick bread with mild sweetness. Add spices of choice, some nuts and dried fruit, bake, then frost with an easy cashew cream vanilla frosting. This is an incredibly moist carrot cake. It tastes even better after chilling as the spices infuse the loaf. The frosting is cashews plus little sweetener, lemon and vanilla! I use my mini food processor to shred the carrots. That reduces elbow grease and time needed. Bake this loaf and tag me on Instagram. For a Gluten and Grain free version, try this. What are your plans for Easter?
Other Easter Recipes from the blog
- Carrot Cake Pancakes
- Carrot Cake Ice Cream with candied walnuts and roasted carrots
- Carrot Veggie Pilaf with shredded carrots.
- GF Carrot Cake – Gluten-free.
- Or use the 1.5 to 2 cups of dry ingredients from my gf pumpkin loaf to make this loaf gluten-free. Add 1/2 cup oats and 1 tbsp chia seeds as well to help hold the bread.
Mix the dry ingredients. Soak the shredded carrots in maple. Mix in the pureed carrots + apples. Mix in the dry to make a thick stiff batter. Drop into parchment lined pan and even it out.
Bake until toothpick from the center comes out almost clean.
Cool completely. Slice and serve or frost, slice and serve. Frosting Inspired by Wallflower Girl’s Cashew coconut flour frosting.
Video!
Vegan Carrot Cake Recipe
Ingredients
Wet:
- 2 cups loosely packed grated or shredded carrots
- 1/4 cup maple syrup
- 2/3 cup sugar, i use a mix of regular and brown sugar. Add 2 tbsp more for sweeter
- 1/4 cup oil
- 2 tsp lemon juice
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 tbsp flax seed meal
- 1/2 of a small apple or 1/4 cup chopped apple or use 1/4 cup apple sauce
- 1/3-1/2 cup chopped carrots
- 1/2 inch fresh ginger, optional
- 1/2 cup water or non dairy milk, or use orange juice
Dry:
- 2 cups flour, I use 1 cup whole wheat and 1 cup unbleached white
- 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp or more cardamom
- 1/2 tsp ground ginger
- 1/3 tsp salt
- 1/3 cup chopped walnuts
- 1/3 cup currants or raisins
Cashew Vanilla Frosting:
- 1/2 cup cashews soaked for 1 hour or overnight
- 3-4 tbsp water
- 1/8-1/4 tsp salt
- 2 tsp or more lemon juice
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
- 1-2 tsp coconut flour
Instructions
- Prepare your pan for baking by lining with parchment or greasing and dusting with flour. Preheat the oven to 365 degrees F / 180ºc.
- Grate or shred the carrots and transfer to a bowl. Add the maple, sugar, oil, lemon, vanilla and mix well. Let sit for 2 mins.
- Meanwhile Blend the flax, apples, chopped carrots, ginger with water until pureed. Add to the carrot bowl and mix well.
- In another bowl, whisk the dry ingredients until well combined. Transfer to the wet and mix until there are no dry flour streaks. Fold in the nuts and currants. The mixture should be a stiff-ish batter. If the batter is too wet/moist (depends on the carrots), add 1 to 2 tbsp more flour and mix in.
- Drop the thick batter into prepared loaf pan. Even it out on the top.
- Bake for 60 to 70 minutes or until the toothpick from the center comes out almost clean. Cool for 15 mins and remove from the pan. Cool for atleast another 10 minutes before slicing.
- Frosting: Blend the soaked cashews with water, salt, lemon, sugar and vanilla. Blend until smooth. (I use a nutri bullet small blender).Taste and adjust lemon, sweet and salt and blend. Add a 1/4 tsp white vinegar for stronger sour flavor. Add some cinnamon for a cinnamony frosting. If the mixture is runny, add 1 tsp coconut flour and blend it. Add more coconut flour if needed to get the desired consistency. Spread the frosting over the cake.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Thanks for the recipe, Richa! I look forward to trying the GF version 🙂
What a total dream!
This looks amazing! What GF flours would you recommend for the cake part? I can’t have wheat….
There is a gluten-free carrot cake recipe linked on the post. You can make this loaf with a gluten-free flour blend that has gum in it.
The texture of this carrot cake looks absolutely perfect, Richa!!
Thank you Sarah!
My boyfriend loves carrot cake, but after almost two years together, I still haven’t made it for him. This particular recipe looks amazing! I am also sitting on the entire giant bag of heirloom carrots from Trader Joe’s right now. That would involve a multi colored carrots which might make this effective carrot cake. His birthday is this week, so I thought I would rather make this in the form of a birthday cake. What do you think? Should I double the recipe and use round cake pans?
Hi Johanna, The cake is quite hearty. I would suggest you bake it into a 9 inch cake pan as a single layer cake (45 to 50 mins bake time or until toothpick from the center comes out clean). Double the frosting and make it thicker to frost the entire cake. You can add some chopped walnuts or pecans on top for decoration or coconut flakes.
My plans for Easter are to eat a healthier meal and that’s a step in the right direction!
This sure does look yummy!! I love coconut flour – it has such a distinct flavor. This Easter I’m going on an easy hike in Tacoma, and then getting a Thai massage! Easter was always a family holiday for me, but my family in on the east coast so it’s kind of just another Sunday now. What do you do for Easter?
We don’t usually plan anything. Sometimes there is a potluck event or something we end up attending. This weekend however there are a bunch of Holi events scheduled in Redmond and Bellevue. So we might go there, get colored and come back and try to scrub it all off. 🙂
Sounds really good! Can this be made gluten free?
This is one amazing carrot cake!! I love the added fresh ginger 🙂 This is now my new favourite loaf recipe, thanks so much!! ( I just about ate half the loaf 😉 )
Yay!! i am so happy you made it already and ate half of it!!
Amen to that. I love the flexibility of the recipe.–chopped apples or applesauce, etc. The cake/ loaf turned out SO good & the cashew creme frosting on it –so good on a snowed-
in, cold day!
is there a substitution for the coconut flour? this recipe looks amazing!
Thanks Jill. Use some more soaked cashews and blend in for a creamy frosting consistency.