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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.
This recipe was divine. It came out moist and overall perfect. Will be making this more in the future ! Thank you for sharing this amazing recipe
Made this without the walnuts, ginger or raisins (unfortunately realized we didn’t have them at the last second!). Think the raisins were really needed for the sweetness so I wish I upped the sugar. Still really yummy. Just wanted to comment because the cream cheese icing was amazing! I had some cashew cream cheese I’d cultured with probiotic powder over night and even though we didn’t have coconut flour, adding in some desiccated coconut really brought out a cream cheesey flavor.
Awesome! yes the raisins do add quite some sweetness. You can use chopped up dates too.
Hi Richa,
I wanted to say that I made this a few days ago and it is LUSH!! I’m so impressed as I am a recent convert to a plant based diet, and my cake efforts haven’t gone brilliantly so far. I am trying to avoid as much fructose as possible, so used brown rice malt syrup instead of maple, and dextrose instead of the normal sugar. It is fantastic!! I also had to leave out the walnuts as my daughter isn’t keen at all, but it screams out for them 🙂 I didn’t have all the ingredients for the icing so didn’t make it this time, but will definitely try next time round.
Thanks so much for the recipe,
EllsBells591
Thats awesome! so glad it turned out so well!
Oh my gosh, this is just nothing but YUM! So many flavours rolling around in there, and I’m a huge sucker for cardamom so….wowza.
I’ve had two slices. But it’s vegan and stuff, right? So I can have like six more tonight without any guilt?
😉
totally! 🙂
That frosting is fabulous. I didn’t even soak the cashews and my little nutribullet (that I got from your recommendation) worked perfectly. Haven’t made the cake, but am using this frosting in your 1-hr cinnamon rolls, which are rising beautifully now. 🙂
yay! i love that nutritbullet. its a breeze to clean and works out fine for the quantities i use.
Yet another awesome recipe. I’d been craving a carrot cake with real-food ingredients and this was exactly the answer. Turned out wonderful even though I accidentally left out the blended carrots. Delicious batter too – even “cleaning” the bowl is a treat. 🙂
Awesome! so glad it turned out so well!
Hi Richa, I recently made this cake and it came out great. Thank you for an awesome recipe. I love carrot cakes so this just hit the spot 🙂
Awesome!