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Home » Recipes » All the best vegan recipes from Sweeter than Oats

published: Feb 20, 2023 · modified: Feb 20, 2023 by Freya · This post may contain affiliate links ·

Quick and Easy Vegan Carrot Cake

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Carrot Cake pin

Carrot Cake was the first proper cake I ever baked in home economics, and I found it really easy. My version is even easier and quicker - simply blend and stir, plus it's eggless and dairy-free!

Pin my easy vegan Carrot Cake recipe to make later!

Vegan Carrot Cake
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This was inspired by my popular vegan banana bread recipe, and my zucchini chocolate chip bread! I love to ice this cake with just a simple piping of my vegan cream cheese icing.

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  • Ingredients
  • Instructions
  • Substitutions
  • Storage
  • Related
  • 📋 Recipe

Once upon a time, a long while ago when it was still considered recherché to put vegetables into cakes, carrot cake was thought to be the cure-all, healthy version of cake.

It has a vegetable in it, so that must cancel out all of that fat and sugar, right?

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As a vegetable-queasy vegetarian child, my mum thought that carrot cake was the answer to her prayers. It was one way that I actually enjoyed eating carrots and she thought that perhaps it might help my increasingly bad eyesight too. Of course, the payoff was that I had to grate the carrots.

Carrot Cake with a slice cut out

Suffice to say, in spite of the enforced child labour, I wasn't complaining, I even went to so far as to bake a carrot cake for my first Home Economics class end of term exam, such was my love for this cake.

Asides from making people feel less guilty about consuming cake, now that the shock value of eating of a cake with carrots in it has long since passed, what are we left with?

Simply a moist, spicy cake that lasts exceptionally well in the cake tin and is a snap to make (aside from the utter tedium of grating the carrots, that is). If there could be one way to improve this rich, tender crumbed cake, what would it be? Of course, a Carrot Cake that is lower in fat. Enter the Healthy-ish Carrot Cake.

Close up of carrot cake

I say healthy-ish because you control certain elements of it. You can add fresh pineapple for a tropical hit. You can use a non-fat icing by simply combining icing (confectioners) sugar with some lemon juice until a thick, glossy, spreadable icing is achieved. Sure, you’re still eating sugar but at least you’re in control. Plus, there isn’t much sugar in the cake and what sugar there is unrefined, which gives a richer flavour.

The butter element is replaced with vegetable oil and for additional natural sweetness we have golden sultanas. And of course, the carrots themselves are naturally sweet and generously exude this sweetness during the baking process.

I often find that shop bought carrot cake is just too sweet, and has too much icing, mine is just a single layer cake, piped with a generous layer of icing and some rather rough and ready marzipan carrots that I made.

For added interest, you could also add some desiccated coconut or chopped walnuts or pumpkin seeds, but I think that too many accessories detract from the natural beauty of the carrot cake.

I couldn’t entirely forgo the butter element though and slathered mine with a rich vegan cream cheese icing. After all, it’s the icing that makes a carrot cake as far as I’m concerned. However, this cake is naturally moist enough that you can omit the icing entirely.

As an alternative, I have mixed cream cheese with icing sugar and a spritz of lime juice and this works just as well, although it doesn’t set as firmly. Either way, I can eat the icing straight from the bowl and to hell with the cake!

Ingredients

Ingredients for Carrot Cake
  • carrots, grated
  • plain flour and spices
  • vegetable oil
  • vegan yogurt
  • sultanas
  • brown sugar

(This is ONLY a list of ingredients for the recipe; please see recipe card below for complete printable recipe. Or if you use the JUMP TO RECIPE at the top of the page, it will take you directly to the complete recipe.)

Instructions

Wet ingredients ready to be blended for Carrot Cake

Place vegetable oil, yogurt, vanilla extract and sugar into a blender (I use a smoothie maker) and whizz up to a smooth paste. Whisk the dry ingredients (excluding the sugar, carrots and sultanas) in a large mixing bowl.

Mixing all the ingredients together for carrot cake

Stir this into the flour mixture, along with the grated carrot, walnuts and sultanas until there are no more dry patches of flour

Carrot cake ready to be baked

Pour into lined 7" cake tin and bake for about 40 mins at 180c.

Baked carrot cake ready to be iced

The baked cake, cooled and ready to be iced!

Hint: to make this even quicker, I buy pre-grated carrot, it usually comes in bags of 200g for about 50p (2023 Tesco prices), which seems like great value to me.

Substitutions

Gluten-Free - I have made this recipe using self-raising gluten-free flour and it works perfectly!

Storage

Store the baked and iced cake in an airtight cake tin at room temperature if cold, in the fridge if warm (to avoid the icing going soft).

You can freeze the cooled, un-iced vegan carrot cake by wrapping in a couple of tight layers of clingfilm, then tinfoil for about 3 months. To thaw, remove all the wrappings, and place on a plate, leaving to thaw at room temperature.

Related

Looking for other recipes like this? Try these:

  • Vegan Banana Bread
    The Best Vegan Banana Bread Recipe Ever - quick and simple to prepare!
  • A loaf of sultana bread
    Easy and Delicious Vegan Sultana Loaf
  • Zucchini Bread slices
    The Simplest Vegan Zucchini Bread Recipe Ever - light, fluffy and prepped in minutes!
  • Cream Cheese icing featured image
    Easy and Quick Vegan Cream Cheese Icing

📋 Recipe

Vegan Carrot Cake
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5 from 2 votes

Quick and Easy Vegan Carrot Cake

YIELD 6 slices
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 45 minutes
Total Time: 50 minutes
A quick and easy version of the classic cake

Equipment

  • 1 7" cake tin, lined, square or round

Ingredients

  • 1¼ cups plain flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon Bicarbonate of soda
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • ¼ teaspoon mixed spice
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • ½ cup vegetable oil
  • ¾ cup yogurt vegan, plain
  • ¾ cup brown sugar
  • 200 g carrots grated weight
  • ½ cup sultanas
  • ¼ cup Walnuts chopped, optional

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 180c.
  • Line or grease and flour a 7" cake tin (square or round).
  • Sieve together the flour, spices, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder.
  • In a blender, whizz together the vegetable oil, yogurt and sugar until smooth. Stir this into the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.
  • Fold in the grated carrot and sultanas and walnuts (if using) until thoroughly amalgamated.
  • Pour into your prepared baking tin and bake for 40-50 minutes or a skewer comes out clean.
  • Leave to cool for five minutes in the tin, then turn out onto a cooling rack.
  • Leave to cool completely before icing.
RECIPE BY Freya

Nutrition

Calories: 464kcal | Carbohydrates: 63g | Protein: 5g | Fat: 23g | Saturated Fat: 4g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 13g | Monounsaturated Fat: 5g | Trans Fat: 0.1g | Cholesterol: 4mg | Sodium: 406mg | Potassium: 347mg | Fiber: 3g | Sugar: 37g | Vitamin A: 6347IU | Vitamin C: 3mg | Calcium: 131mg | Iron: 2mg
Tried it and Loved it?Mention @sweeterthanoats or tag sweeterthanoats!

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Hi, I'm Freya! I'm a plant-based foodie, obsessed with true crime, collecting cookbooks and photographing everything I eat.

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