Realistic Carrot Cake | Vegan

Hi everyone, this post is far from perfect and I’m not going to lie, it’s a little rushed. If you’re reading this the day it goes up (April 17th), today is my mum’s birthday and this is the cake I made her….today. She got home a few hours earlier than usual so I rushed to finish it and take a few photos before I presented her with it.  This year I decided to make a carrot cake with an orange buttercream frosting. Just a warning, this is probably the unhealthiest thing you will ever see me make and I’m not including the nutritional information for this one. Quite frankly, those numbers will be huge and no one needs to know.  

As a result, I didn’t have time to perfectly spread the icing or give it time to set, so this definitely looks more ‘homemade’ than magazine worthy. I’ve never made vegan carrot cake before so I didn’t want to over complicate it by making it gluten free as well. Hopefully you’ll see an updated version of this sometime soon with a gluten free version too.  

I wanted to make this as realistic and attainable for the average reader too so there’s no ‘weird’ ingredients in this, we’re not making it with chickpea liquid and there’s no xanthan gum anywhere to be seen. This is all stuff you’ll find easily in your average supermarket.  

If you have an 8 inch cake tin the recipe below should be enough to make the top and bottom layer. I had a 12 inch tin and ended up doubling the recipe. I really hope my family is hungry because there’s one hella large cake in my kitchen right now.   

Ingredients 

For the cake: 

• 2 cups plain flour 
• 1tsp baking powder 
• 1tsp baking soda 
• 1 ½ cups brown sugar 
• 250g grated carrot 
• 1tbsp apple cider vinegar  
• 2 flax eggs (2tbsp flax seed + 6tbsp water) 
• ½ cup sunflower oil  
• 1tsp vanilla extract 
• ½ cup chopped walnuts  
• ¼ cup raisins/ dried fruit  
• ½ tsp cinnamon

For the frosting: 

• 3tbsp dairy free butter 
• 400g powdered sugar  
• 2tsp orange oil (orange extract is also fine) 
• Juice of half an orange 
• 1tsp apple cider vinegar  

For the frosting I also had some Betty Crocker Cream Cheese style icing on hand in case I ran out of the batch I made. If you’re in a hurry you could use something like that and add the orange ingredients to it.

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and grease your cake tins. Line the bottom with some greaseproof paper.  
2. Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon into a mixing bowl. 
3. Add the grated carrot and the brown sugar. 
4. Prepare the flax eggs and leave them to one side while you add the oil, vanilla and apple cider vinegar to the mixing bowl. 
5. Now add the flax eggs and mix everything together in the mixing bowl. 
6. Lastly add the chopped walnuts and raisins if you want to add them. 
7. Divide the mixture between the two cake tins. 
8. Place into the oven for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. 
9. Allow the cakes to cool completely. While the cakes are cooling, prepare your icing. 
10. Add all of the icing ingredients to a mixing bowl then either using an electric whisk, whisk on low speed until fully combined or do it by hand. 
11. Spread frosting to the top of one of the layers. 
12. Add the other layer on top and complete the frosting of the top and sides of the cake. 

Serve and enjoy!

Do you know anyone who’d love this as their birthday cake? To see more of my cakes and tray bake recipes, click here.

 

Until next time,

Sophie

 

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