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 with your vegan cream cheese frosting recipe and it is the best carrot cake I’ve ever had! Thank you so much. No one believes it’s vegan! So fluffy.
I made this last night and it turned out super delicious. I used only spelt flour for all of the flour, and I halved the amount of sugar. I also threw in some walnuts and raisins. I think this turned out exactly as I wanted- moist, not too sweet, and a really pleasing texture.
I also baked this in a slightly longer pan, so it came out thinner, but I didn’t mind it at all! More frosting to cake ratio. 🙂
Just made this cake and it came out perfect! Added chopped walnuts and raisins with the carrots. Put a little orange liqueuer in the batter. Baked for 45 min. Made the cream cheese frosting and used only 1 cup powdered sugar for the frosting. Rave reviews! Thank you for your recipes, it will become a go-to for me!
Wow, this is so good. Best carrot cake I’ve ever had. Thank you for this amazing recipe!
The BEST carrot cake I’ve ever had or made! I used half whole wheat and half AP flour, and I replaced half the cane sugar with granulated monk fruit sweetener. Also, due to several nut allergies, I made a simple vegan buttercream frosting (even though yours looks amazing). I don’t think I will ever try another carrot cake recipe again since I’ve found our favorite. 🙂
Hi Jeanine!
Great recipe, I was wondering if I can make this cake with almond, coconut or oat flour instead? Thank you!
Hey there….. I want to make this cake as it looks delicious, but I was wondering if I could substitute the maple syrup for honey? IDK if it will work because they don’t rly have similar textures. Reply! Thank you.
Hey there….. I want to make this cake as it looks delicious, but I was wondering if I could substitute the maple syrup for honey? IDK if it will work because they don’t rly have similar textures. Reply!
This recipe is amazing!! I made it for my partners birthday party and there was not a crumb left!!
I’m thinking of turning these into cupcakes. Do you have a suggestion for cook time?
I’m so glad you loved it! I’d just reduce the cooking time (16-18 minutes) for cupcakes.
Amazing, delicious and fluffy.
Substituted for:
Soya milk,
Walnuts & cashew,
Vegetable oil
Used:
1/2 sugar required
100% all purpose flour.
Can’t wait to make it again!
Amazing.
Substituted:
oil to vegetable,
milk to soya,
macadamia to walnuts,
used half sugar
Turned out fluffy and delicious.
Birthday tea cakes for our son & girlfriend who are vegan. I added 1 cup golden raisins, 1/2 coconut , I used oat milk, and a sunflower-coconut oil. What a hit, fabulous, recipe! For the icing I used rum instead of vanilla, really delicious!!
I’m so glad you enjoyed them!
I’ll start positive, I loved the taste. It’s delicious. But, I was a bit disappointed when it came out very moist. I read the comments before I started baking this, and I decided to add half a cup of flour. I also put 1/4 cup of oil instead of 1/2, and yet it still came out way too moist and not even cooked after 50 minutes in the oven.
This is sooo amazing. I didn’t expect the cream cheese to taste so legit!!! A hit with the whole family.
I used all cashews, soaked them overnight (total about 15 hours or something), and made it on a normal blender. It came out smooth.
Added a handful of sunflower and pumpkin seeds each to my cake to give it a bit more bite (I might add a bit more than a handful/top it up with another handful of walnuts next time)
I also mixed white and brown sugar.
Made my own apple sauce with this recipe using two small royal gala apples (made 3/4 cup) https://www.chocolatemoosey.com/2013/10/24/homemade-applesauce/
Love that you don’t need cake tins, icing sugar or store-bought vegan cream cheese either. Thanks again, I’m writing this one into my recipe book!
Hi Hannah, I’m so glad you loved it!
This is the bomb! I added pecans & made into large muffins. Used paper liners & cooked at 360 for 35 mins. Cool in pan 10 mins & transfer to cooling rack. You will love these with or without frosting. The ones I frosted, I put a whole pecan on top for presentation. Looked great too! Thank you!
I’m so glad you loved it!
Can i use maple syrup instead of sugar and how much would I need?
Ok, so I never bother to post comments on cooking blogs but I am right now logging in to tell you that this cake is absolutely phenomenal. I made it for friends who are hard to convince to try anything vegan… but are now convinced this is the best carrot cake that exists. Thank you!!
Yay!!! I’m so glad the cake was a hit. Thanks for coming back to let me know!
Please tell me if I can make this in two layers!
Thank you!
Hi Liz, I haven’t tried, but I think others in the comments above have…
BEST CARROT CAKE RECIPE EVER!!!!! If you’re looking for a carrot cake recipe, this is your sign to go with this one. Stop wasting your time on Google and thank me later. 🙂
Ha ha, thank you for the kind review! I’m so glad you loved it!
This cake is so delish made it in a Bundt pan and it was so pretty I am making this all the time and it just disappears thank you for this amazing recipe
I’m so glad you’ve loved it so much!