I make this vegan carrot cake recipe for Jack's birthday each year. Moist, cinnamon-spiced, and slathered in frosting, it's perfect for celebrations.
This vegan carrot cake recipe is a riff on my mom’s traditional recipe. That cake is Jack’s all-time favorite dessert, so she makes it whenever she comes to visit. Then, I make it again for Jack’s birthday. This year, instead of making her recipe as written, I adapted it to make a vegan carrot cake instead!
My mom’s recipe calls for applesauce, which makes her cake super moist and light. Using applesauce, you can actually veganize carrot cake relatively easily. Along with the shredded carrots, it adds enough moisture to eliminate the need for flax eggs or other unconventional ingredients. As a result, the cake batter comes together with pantry ingredients like all-purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, spices, sugar, and melted coconut oil.
The results are fantastic. The cake is moist, tender, and filled with warm, spiced flavor from cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla extract. Enjoy it on its own, or take it to the next level by slathering it in rich, creamy vegan frosting. Even Jack – a total carrot cake traditionalist – fell for this vegan carrot cake recipe. I think you’ll love it too!
Vegan Carrot Cake Recipe Tips
- Grate your carrots finely. Finely grated carrots meld seamlessly into the cake, while larger pieces create a chunkier, less uniform texture. For tender, cohesive cake slices, grate the carrots on the small holes of a box grater or on the smallest setting of the grating attachment on your food processor.
- Don’t overmix! This rule applies to baked goods across the board. Mix your batter until just combined – and not any longer – or your cake will be dense.
- Let the cake cool completely before you frost it. The hardest part! Make sure your cake is at room temperature before you slather on the frosting. Otherwise, the frosting will melt.
Vegan Carrot Cake Recipe Variations
- Let’s talk frosting. The frosting recipe below is a cream cheese-like blend of macadamia nuts, cashews, lemon juice, coconut oil, and almond milk. Instead of using powdered sugar, I sweeten it naturally with maple syrup. I love this frosting, but you do need a high-speed blender to get it really smooth and creamy. If you don’t have one, or if you prefer a more traditional vegan cream cheese frosting, find one here.
- Or skip the frosting! This vegan carrot cake is delicious plain. We also love it with a dollop of coconut whipped cream.
- Add a mix-in. If you like your cake with raisins, chopped walnuts, or pecans, gently fold 1/2 cup into the cake batter when you add the carrots.
- Or sprinkle something on top. Sprinkle the frosted cake with chopped toasted pecans or walnuts for crunch, or use shredded coconut for extra warm, buttery flavor. Yum!
More Favorite Vegan Desserts
If you love this vegan carrot cake recipe, try one of these vegan treats next:
- Vegan Chocolate Cake
- Healthy Banana Bread
- Banana Muffins
- Best Peanut Butter Cookies
- No Bake Cookies
- Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies
Then, check out this post for 30+ vegan dessert recipes!
Vegan Carrot Cake
Ingredients
For the Cake
- 2¼ cups flour, half spelt or whole wheat, half all-purpose
- 3 teaspoons baking powder*
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 3 teaspoons cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon sea salt
- ½ cup applesauce
- 1 cup almond milk or oat milk
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 cup cane sugar
- ½ cup melted coconut oil or canola oil
- 2 cups grated carrots
Frosting**
- ½ cup raw macadamia nuts, soaked, drained, and rinsed
- ½ cup raw cashews, soaked, drained, and rinsed
- ¼ cup almond milk or oat milk
- ¼ cup maple syrup
- 2 tablespoons coconut oil
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
- ½ teaspoon sea salt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F and grease a 9x13-inch baking pan.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together the applesauce, almond milk, vanilla, sugar, and oil.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix until just combined. Fold in the carrots.
- Transfer to the prepared baking dish and bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let cake cool completely before frosting.
- Make the frosting: In a high-speed blender, place the macadamia nuts, cashews, almond milk, maple syrup, coconut oil, vanilla, lemon juice, and salt. Blend until very smooth, for 1 to 2 minutes or more, scraping down the sides occasionally. You can add an extra tablespoon of almond milk if necessary to get your blade moving.
- Store frosted cake in the fridge.
I made this for my husbands birthday. It was super easy to make and a hit with everyone. I added golden raisins to the batter. My adult son who normally doesn’t eat cake and doesn’t have a sweet tooth requested this cake for his birthday. This will be my go to cake for birthdays and functions.
Hi Heather, I’m so glad you all loved the cake!
I’m a vegan and this is perfect! I’m definitely gonna try this one! My kid loves carrot cake so much! Thank you for sharing!
I would like to try this, but 1 1/2 cups of sugar sounds so sweet. Can I cut it in half? or use 1 cup? Also if I substitute applesauce for flax eggs, how much would I use. Or can I use “fake eggs?”
Something about vegan food make it seem thrice as good! The color, the taste, the texture, and everything about a healthy carrot cake make the cake stand out. It’s even a ketogenic diet friendly recipe! Have you heard of ketogenic vegans? They sound like a happy healthy lifestyle, don’t they? This would be a great recipe for those wanting to start that keto-vegan diet.
I just made this and it was great. I added about 1/8cup of ground flax just for fun. Yummy
This is delicious. I replaced two flax eggs for the applesauce: 2 tablespoons of flax meal and 6 tablespoons water. Thank you for the recipe, I used it for my son’s first birthday. We all loved it.
Can you give the ingredients in real measurements, grams, mL etc. These ones don’t make sense
I’ve made this cake multiple times with the cup measurements and it’s been absolutely perfect but I tried the same recipe but use the gram measurements (I’m from the UK) and it was an absolute fail so I think there might be something off about the conversion? Very very dense and didnt seem as though there was enough flour in it.
We made these as cupcakes with a vegan cream cheese frosting and they were amazing!
I’m so glad you loved the cake as cupcakes!
Hello I’m just wondering if you altered the cooking time or temperature of the oven to turn these into muffins? Thanks!
Hi Summer, I would keep the cooking time the same and check them around 18 to 20 minutes.
Hi! Can these be made into cupcakes as well? If so, how many do you think I’d get from this recipe?
Thanks! 🙂
Is the applesauce help it to rise?? I was curious if I could replace some with carrot puree and add more carrot flavor??
Hi Cassie, it does help it to rise. There’s lots of carrot flavor in the cake, so I’d use the applesauce as it’s written – I think more carrots might make the cake more dense. Hope that helps!
Hey there, your link for the cream cheese frosting isn’t working I don’t know why I was able to see the “option 1” and “option 2” for the frostings earlier but now I can only see the one using nuts. Thanks!
Thanks for pointing that out – here you go!: https://www.loveandlemons.com/vegan-pumpkin-snack-cake/
Great recipe. Accidentally added 1/4 cup maple syrup to the batter so reduced the almond milk by 1/4 cup. Came out great anyway. Nice texture and tastey.
Hi Jeanine,
I really want to try this recipe and bought already all the ingredients but the only blender I currently have is the Ninja professional 900watts. Do you think this would be enough or do you have a vegan alternative for the icing? Really wanted it to have some nuts 🙂
Any suggestions?
Thank you so much!
Sara
Hi Sara, I haven’t used that blender so I’m not quite sure how creamy it’ll make the nuts. You can soak them first to help them soften a bit.
There’s a vegan cream cheese frosting in this recipe that is delicious, it uses vegan cream cheese (I used kite hill almond cream cheese): https://www.loveandlemons.com/vegan-pumpkin-snack-cake/
Hope that helps!
Forgot to mention I would prefer to use Maple syrup rather than powdered sugar in the icing. Do you have a suggestion? 🙂
I’ve tried it but I haven’t had luck making it fluffy and frosting-like. So sorry!
Hi Jeanine,
Thank you so much for your replies.
The cream cheese I have at home is the Koko? Would you say this will go well in that cream cheese recipe you send me or would I be better of trying the macadamia recipe in my blender?
Would love your opinion as not entirely which one is more likely to go “wrong”.
Thank you,
Sara
Hi Sara, I haven’t tried that brand specifically, but I’ve tried multiple vegan cream cheeses and they all seem to have similar textures, so I think it will be fine. I think that route might be the safest if you’re unsure about your blender.
With the icing – we have a cashew allergy in the family and can’t use them – would all macadamias work? Or do you have another suggestion as I really want to make this but my son is allergic (anaphylactic) to cashew, pistachios, walnut, pecan & sesame.
Hi Brooke, I think it might turn out to gritty.
Check out this recipe – there’s a frosting recipe uses vegan cream cheese (regular cream cheese would also work). I think there are some vegan cream cheeses on the market that don’t contain nuts that would would work with this one: https://www.loveandlemons.com/vegan-pumpkin-snack-cake/
hope that helps!
The cake recipe is great. I made cupcakes, using 1/4cup batter per cupcake. The recipe yielded 20 cupcakes. Against popular vote, the frosting was hideous. It tasted like sweet and sour cashew butter. Didn’t taste like cream cheese or any type of frosting at all. I tried saving it, but it died a slow death and was put to rest in the garbage. Thanks for the great cake recipe, but I’ll keep looking for a vegan cream cheese recipe that doesn’t make my eyes water.
Hi Holly, I’m glad you enjoyed the cake and I’m sorry you didn’t like the frosting. I’m wondering if you used raw unsalted cashews (roasted cashews have a more prominent cashew taste). Either way, I recently posted a more traditional vegan cream cheese frosting here that you might prefer: https://www.loveandlemons.com/vegan-pumpkin-snack-cake/ Thank you for your feedback.
I am looking so forward to making this recipe! I am going to make it as is, but I was wondering (since I didn’t see any feedback in comments), has anyone used an all purpose gluten free flour?
Thank you for this recipe. 🙂
This recipe is an absolute winner!
(I made it using ‘healthy baker low fodmap flour’ wheat flour with no issues)
I can’t eat apple sauce, so followed the advice of one of the other commenters and left it out and just added ~1T water instead. The oil I used was sunflower oil and the milk I used was rice milk.
Next time I will bake it as cupcakes and add some chopped walnuts in 🙂
Hi Sammy, I’m so glad you enjoyed the cake! Let me know if you try the pureed carrot – so creative!
Hi! i just tried the receipe and the texture is perfect,definitely will go to my favorites receipes. The only thing i noticed is that it didn’t have so many carrot taste, like it was subtle, in that case should i use more carrot? thank you so much! i discovered this website recently so i’ll be trying out a few more!
cheers from Argentina!
Hi Bee, I’m so glad you enjoyed the recipe! I’d keep the same amount of carrots or the cake will be more dense and might not rise properly.
I wonder if it would work if you boiled and pureed some carrot and used that in place of apple sauce – i think it would up the carrot flavour
This came out perfectly on the first try – super moist and tasty. I do think the cream cheese is an acquired taste but it doesn’t taste very different from real cream cheese I’ve had in the past.
Oh, and I subbed mashed bananas for the apple sauce. Worked perfectly.
I’m so glad you liked it! I bet it would be delicious with mashed banana, I will try that next time!