Vegan Carrot Cake With Vegan Frosting
This is the best healthy vegan carrot cake recipe you’ll ever make! This dairy-free, lightened-up carrot cake is soft, moist, and beautifully sweet. There’s plenty of cinnamon, allspice, and walnuts in every bite, and it’s topped with a rich vegan cream cheese frosting!
Servings: 12 pieces
Calories: 255.4kcal
Ingredients
For The Cake
- 2 cups firmly packed finely grated carrots
- 5 tbsp freshly squeezed orange juice about the juice in one orange
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- ½ cup extra virgin olive oil
- ⅓ cup maple syrup
- ½ cup crushed or chopped pineapple drained
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1½ cups whole-wheat pastry flour
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- ½ tsp ground allspice
- ¾ cup chopped walnuts chopped
For The Icing
- 4 oz vegan cream cheese (I like Miyokos Organic)
- ½ cup powdered sugar
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- ½ tsp orange zest optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- In a mixing bowl, stir together the carrots, orange juice, vanilla, olive oil, maple syrup, and pineapple until well blended.
- In another bowl, stir together the flours, baking soda, and spices. Mix in the walnuts.
- Blend the dry ingredients into the carrot mixture, stirring until just mixed.
- Pour the batter into a nonstick 8-inch-square baking pan and bake for 50-60 minutes until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from oven, let cool slightly, and remove from pan.
- To make the icing, mix the cream cheese, powdered sugar, vanilla extract and orange zest together. Once the cake has cooled, spread the icing over the cake. Alternatively, you can just dust the cake with powdered sugar and serve.
Notes
- Don’t overmix the batter or the carrot cake may end up too dense.
- Be sure to spray your baking pan with a nonstick spray or use a nonstick pan. If you are removing a cake from the pan you could take a knife and lightly rub it around the edges to break anything loose from the pan itself. Then it should easily come out of the pan when you flip it over. If you don't have a non-stick pan, you can line it with parchment for easy removal.
- Whenever possible use fresh orange juice not something you buy commercially prepared. Fresh orange juice is much healthier and gives this healthy carrot cake the perfect flavor.
- The easiest way to grate carrots is in the food processor, using the grating attachment. You can also use a hand grater - it will just take longer. can grate the carrots in your food processor with the grated blade, or you can use a hand grater.
- For the sweetest carrot flavor, choose medium sized carrots and peel them before grating.
- Let your cake cool completely before frosting it, otherwise the frosting might melt off the cake!
- You can turn these into cupcakes or muffins! Transfer the batter to muffin tins and bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes (or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean).
- If you're not the icing type, it could be subbed out for just a dusting of powdered sugar over the top of the cake.
- For a sweeter cake, use up to 2/3 cup maple syrup. Just keep in mind the amount of sugar per slice will double (to about 24 grams per slice)
- Calorie counts include frosting!
Nutrition
Serving: 1square | Calories: 255.4kcal | Carbohydrates: 34.4g | Protein: 4.9g | Fat: 11.8g | Saturated Fat: 2.2g | Cholesterol: 5.6mg | Sodium: 43.4mg | Potassium: 156.7mg | Fiber: 3.4g | Sugar: 12.2g