Vegan Carrot Cake

A simple vegan carrot cake with orange and cardamon and a maple sweetened cream cheese icing. Just the thing for afternoon coffee or spring holidays.

Most vegan carrot cake recipes rely on a lot of sugar and loads of oil, but this version is much lighter. We’ve cut some of the oil, using apple sauce to moisten, and maple syrup adds sweetness along with coconut sugar. Cake for breakfast, why not?

The addition of a good dose of cardamom and a hit of orange zest makes this recipe more modern and less like your mum’s carrot cake of yesteryear. Cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg are still in there, don’t worry! It’s still super cozy, a perfect cool weather cake for spring or autumn.

This is delicious with some maple sweetened coconut whipped cream but a simple glaze will work just as well. For something entirely different, but delicious, try icing yours with a chocolate ganache. Try topping the cake with some candied mixed peel to fancy things up even more.

Jump to:

• Ingredients
• Method
• Tips and Notes
• Substitutions
• Recipe

Use the JUMP TO RECIPE button at the top of the post, or scroll to the bottom of the post, to see the full recipe card with ingredient measurements and instructions.

Ingredients

Dry Ingredients

Wet Ingredients

Method

Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Grease a 9-inch (23-cm) square baking pan with 1 teaspoon of oil and line it with parchment paper. Leave some paper hanging over the edges of the pan to use as handles later. Set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, orange zest, and spices.

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In a medium bowl, whisk together the milk, apple sauce, coconut sugar, oil, and maple syrup. 

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Make a well in the middle of the flour mixture then pour the mixed wet ingredients into the bowl of dry. Using a rubber spatula or wooden spoon, gently fold everything together until just combined, with some streaks of flour remaining.

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Add the grated carrot and chopped walnuts to the bowl. Continue to fold the batter together gently until just combined — a few streaks of flour are okay!

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Spoon the batter into the prepared baking pan. Smooth the batter evenly into the pan using the back of the spoon.

Place the carrot cake in the preheated oven for 33 to 35 minutes, or until the top springs back when lightly touched, or a tester comes out clean.

Remove the cake from the oven, and place the pan on a wire rack to cool for 10 to 15 minutes. Use the parchment paper handles to gently lift the cake from the pan. Remove the paper from the cake then place it on the wire rack to cool completely.

Serve vegan carrot cake plain for breakfast or as a snack, or top it with vegan cream cheese icing (pictured) or coconut whipped cream. We garnished our cake with toasted coconut pieces and dried mandarin orange slices.

Tips and Notes

To speed up the process, you can grate the carrots with the grating attachment in your food processor if you have one. Otherwise a good old fashioned box grater does the trick!

Baking time is just 30 minutes, so you’re about 40 minutes away from eating your very own vegan carrot cake right now. If you can’t wait for it to cool down first, just serve the whipped cream on the side.

The cake keeps well for several days without drying out thanks to the moisture from the carrots and applesauce. It’s a good choice even for small households – and you can easily make it into cupcakes! Just bake for about 20 minutes instead of 30 in a standard muffin tin.

We use a square baking tin but you can use an equivalent round one (23cm / 9 in.) if you prefer.

Substitutions

We love the orange and spice combination, but if you don’t have an orange, feel free to leave it out or replace with a bit of lemon zest. Since there’s no orange juice in the cake, it’s an easy switch. You can also use a bit of chopped candied peel instead.

Hate nutmeg? Ditch it. Cloves, allspice, and any other warming sweet spices – or a blend like pumpkin pie spice – work well in this cake. Alternatively, increase one of the other spices, like the cinnamon or cardamom.

If you have no walnuts on hand, feel free to sub for another nut. We recommend pecans as the top substitution, but hazelnuts are nice too. If you need to it be nut free, they can be left out or you can use sunflower seeds.

We call for almond milk, but other light milks like oat, cashew, and so on are all great (not full-fat canned coconut milk).

Light cooking oil typically refers to organic canola oil, grape seed, avocado, and other oils that don’t have a pronounced flavour on their own. Olive is probably a bit strong and coconut oil will make the cake too dense.

Other sugars like brown or cane sugar can be switched for the coconut sugar, but if you’re going to switch it, we prefer brown sugar for a similar caramel flavour to coconut. Make sure you’re using unsweetened applesauce or risk the cake being quite sweet.

We haven’t tried it, but we’ve heard from readers that this cake can be made gluten free using a gluten-free flour blend (we like the all-purpose GF from Bob’s Red Mill).

If, for some reason, you have parsnips in the house but no carrots, you can also make a vegan parsnip cake.

More Spring Bakes

Rhubarb Clafoutis
Sourdough Hot Cross Buns
Sweet Pea and Pistachio Cake
Strawberry Hand Pies
Strawberry Rhubarb Bread Pudding

More Vegan Sweets

Vegan Scones
Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes
Cranberry Apple Crisp
Peach Galette with Raspberries and Ginger
Edible Vegan Cookie Dough

If you make this recipe, let us know by tagging @baked_theblog + #bakedtheblog on Instagram! We love to feel like we’re in the kitchen with you.

This post was originally shared in September 2018. It has been most recently updated as of March 2021.