Vegan Carrot Cake Recipe - With The BEST Vegan Frosting! (2024)

FAQs

What is vegan carrot cake made of? ›

The vegan carrot cake recipe calls for shredded carrot, applesauce or pineapple, optional oil, white vinegar or apple cider vinegar, flour, pure vanilla extract, cinnamon, baking soda, sugar, and a pinch of salt. Spelt, oat, white all purpose, and some brands of gluten free flour will work.

Carrot cake is oil-based, rather than butter-based. This keeps it moist and helps it last for days. Unfortunately, it also means you lose the leavening power that creaming butter and sugar would bring. (Creaming, or beating together the two ingredients on high speed, aerates the butter.)

The key to a soft and fluffy carrot cake is to have the carrots bake into the crumb. If you coarsely grate the carrots, then they will not bake as quickly and will stay as threads through the cake which can get stuck in your teeth. For maximum flavor and the best texture, you'll need to grate them finely.

This is because too much batter in one cake tin may result in the weight of the batter being too much for the cake to support, causing the cake to collapse and sink in the middle as it bakes. This is especially true for cake recipes which have a more softer, delicate structure to them, which many of my cake recipes do.

Some health benefits of choosing vegan cakes over regular cakes include: Plant-based products are healthier. Animal fats are definitely unhealthy and responsible for diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, etc. Plant-based fats have no cholesterol which is much healthier for you.

With only four ingredients — butter, cream cheese, vanilla extract, and powdered sugar — the best cream cheese frosting recipe is one that gets the proportions just right. This recipe keeps things pleasantly tangy by using one part butter to two parts cream cheese, which helps balance the sweetness.

Vegetable oil contributes moistness far more reliably, a result of the fact that oil remains liquid at room temperature while butter solidifies. Liquid contributes to the sensation of moistness, and therefore cakes made with oil often present as moister than their butter-based counterparts.

Mayonnaise makes a nice replacement for oil; after all, it is oil and eggs combined. Applesauce is another ingredient that will make your cake moist and fat-free. I have used melted unsalted butter before in cake mixes and it works very well. I never keep corn or vegetable oils on hand.

Carrots contain pigments that are sensitive to changes in pH balance. When the shreds of carrot come into contact with the alkaline baking soda, a chemical reaction takes place that causes the pigments to change color.

It is a carrot cake, after all. Pecans and Raisins: These add texture, but they are optional. Reading through the comment section, it is clear that some people love nuts and raisins in carrot cake, while others cannot stand them. I love them, but add what you love!

Why is my vegan cake not fluffy? ›

CAKE NOT RISING

This can be caused by a few things already mentioned such as using the wrong egg replacer or over mixing. I always recommend using fresh raising agents. Generally, baking soda and baking powder only stay active for 3 months after opening.

Using baking powder (a chemical leavening agent) often becomes tricky. How much is enough to leaven dense, oil-based cakes like carrot cake? Sometimes, we end up using too much baking powder to help this type of cake rise, and this mistake can unfortunately make them taste bitter or like chemicals.

The idea behind this test is you can insert a toothpick or paring knife into the center of the cake to see if the crumb has set. If the tester comes out clean, it's done. If it comes out gummy or with crumbs clinging to it, the cake needs more time in the oven.

Vegan cake is cake made without eggs, dairy butter or dairy milk. Each of these standard ingredients is easily replaced by plant-based substitutes, such as banana or flaxseed for eggs, non-trans fat margarine or oils for butters and plant milks for milk.

To put it simply, a vegan cake is a cake that doesn't contain any animal-derived ingredients, most notably eggs, milk, and other dairy products. In 'regular' cakes, eggs and dairy products are among the key ingredients used to create the sponge and icing, and often decorations, too.

Differentiating between a Vegan Cake and Vegetarian cake:

It involves replacing other dairy products with plant-based dairy. So in vegan cakes, we do not use any dairy or eggs.