A moist and flavour-packed vegan carrot cake with cream 'cheese' icing, that's easy to make with no weird ingredients... what more could you ask for?!
🍴Why you will love this recipe
Carrot cake must surely be one of the nation's favourite teatime treats, and there's absolutely no reason why vegans should miss out, so here's a plant-based version, with dairy-free cream 'cheese' icing to top it off.
Incredibly moist and studded with juicy sultanas, walnuts and carrot, this has all the classic flavours of a traditional carrot cake, just without the eggs and butter. No one will believe that it is vegan!
This one-bowl recipe really is easy, I promise - even if you've never baked a vegan cake before, this is a very simple one to start with. You don't need a food mixer or any fancy equipment, just a large bowl, two baking tins and an oven.
Do give it a go and let me know in the comments below or on instagram how you get on - I love seeing photos of your vegan cakes!
Jump to:
📝 What you need
Ingredients
Carrots obviously! But you can also experiment with other vegetables - I made a parsnip version of this a few months ago and it was pretty epic, even if I do say so myself!!
Walnuts are a carrot cake classic but I do also love this with pecans or hazelnuts so do choose whichever you prefer, or you have in the cupboard!
Soya milk I always recommend soya milk for baking particularly when it is acting as an 'egg replacer' as it has the highest protein content of any of the plant based milks so behaves most like an egg would. However your cake will still turn out well if you use oat or nut milks too, so if you can't or don't want to use soya don't be put off.
Dairy-free margarine for the icing - I often use a spread rather than a block margarine as it makes the icing very soft, creamy and easy to work with. My favourites are Flora vegan or Naturli spread. Do leave them out of the fridge for a while before making the icing, the softer the better.
Dairy-free cream cheese for the icing - I have tried using many different brands and usually come back to Violife cream cheese as the best tasting in this icing.
Pistachios just look so pretty on the top of this cake, but they are pricey so do use walnuts or pecans instead, or pipe pretty rosettes of the icing around the edge!
👩🏽🍳 How to make your Vegan Carrot Cake
For a full, printable recipe with ingredients and detailed instructions, scroll to the bottom of this page 👇🏼.
Peel and grate the carrots into a small bowl. Finely chop the walnuts. Grate in the orange zest and add the sultanas. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg.
Add the soya milk and rapeseed oil and mix until smooth. Stir through the walnuts, sultanas and carrots.
Divide the mixture between two lined tins and bake for 25-30 minutes. When cool, layer with cream 'cheese' icing and scatter with chopped pistachios.
⭐️ Reader Testimonials
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "Delicious cake and a hit with non-vegans too. So much so that a friend has passed it on to a teacher colleague to share with her class!" Tessa
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "Carrot cake was delicious and family members I left outside their door thought I had bought it and asked for the recipe! Will make again as was so easy to do." Renita
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "Made this for my wife’s birthday – it’s the first time I ever made a two-layered cake and frosting – it came out amazing! The instructions are great and so easy to follow, thanks for a great recipe!" Jon
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "I made this the other day. It truly is the best carrot cake I’ve ever tasted – and I’ve tasted a lot! You’d also never know that it’s vegan." Jo
🔪 Top Tips & FAQs
Storing the carrot cake overnight in an airtight container or tin before icing makes a huge difference to the texture. The crust will become soft and the cake will become even more moist.
As soon as the wet ingredients are mixed into the dry, try to work quickly to get the cakes into the oven as soon as possible. The raising agent will get to work as soon as it is mixed with the yoghurt, and you want this to happen in the oven, not beforehand!
Frequently Asked Questions
This cake keeps really well in an airtight cake tin or tupperware for 3-4 days - it is so moist thanks to the carrots and nuts that it doesn't dry out like a plain sponge might.
Yes, it freezes really well, so great if you need to plan ahead for a party or gathering. Just pop a sheet of greaseproof paper between the two sponges and wrap them in foil and they will keep really well for months. Then you just need to ice and decorate them before serving.
This is so straightforward to make that sometimes I double the recipe and pop a spare cake in the freezer (or make little individual ones to freeze, even better!). It is so handy to have cake in the freezer for unexpected guests or school cake sales you've forgotten about...!
🍽 If you liked that...
.... you might also enjoy these vegan recipes from The Veg Space:
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📖 Recipe
Easy Vegan Carrot Cake
Ingredients
For the cake:
- 270 g carrots
- 135 g walnuts
- 1 orange
- 135 g sultanas
- 400 g self-raising flour
- 2 teaspoon baking powder
- 240 g soft light brown sugar
- ½ teaspoon grated nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 400 ml soya milk
- 160 ml rapeseed oil (or other flavourless oil)
For the icing:
- 440 g icing sugar
- 100 g dairy-free margarine
- 100 g dairy-free cream 'cheese'
- 1-2 tablespoon soya milk
- 3 tablespoon shelled pistachios (optional)
Instructions
For the cake:
- Preheat the oven to 180°C (fan) / 350°F / Gas Mark 4. Grease two 23cm (9 inch) cake tins and line the bottoms with baking parchment / greaseproof paper.
- Peel and trim the carrots and grate them into a bowl. Finely chop the walnuts and add to the carrots. Grate the zest of the orange into the bowl, and finally weigh the sultanas and add to the bowl.
- Next, put the flour, baking powder, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon and salt into a large bowl.
- Mix the soya milk and rapeseed oil in a jug, then tip them into the large bowl with the dry ingredients. Mix (by hand) until combined and the batter is fairly smooth.
- Tip in the carrot, walnuts, orange zest and sultanas and stir until fully combined.
- Bang the bowl firmly onto the work surface (this stops the raising agents starting to work too early). Divide the cake mixture between the two tins, and bang each tin on the work surface once again, (you will see tiny bubbles come to the surface).
- Bake for 25-30 minutes until a knife or skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then turn out onto a cooling rack, peel off the paper and leave until fully cool.
- TOP TIP: If you have time, the cake will be even better if you now put it in an airtight container or tin overnight. The crust will become soft and the cake will become more moist.
For the icing:
- Place the icing sugar, margarine and cream cheese into a large bowl (or mixer), and beat together until completely smooth. Add the soya milk one tablespoon at a time until the icing is light and fluffy.
- Sandwich the two cakes together with a layer of icing in the middle (use about one third of the icing for this), and spread the remaining icing over the top of the cake. Sprinkle with chopped pistachios if you wish, or any other chopped nuts.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
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Kate says
I substituted chocolate chips for the dried fruit and used vanilla extract instead of cinnamon and they were great - lovely rise and held their shape when cooled. lovely flavour - not too sweet but feels like a nice treat. Thank you!
Kate says
Sorry wrong recipe page! This was for the banana muffins
Jenny says
Another Veg Space recipe for the win! I made this for my mum's birthday and it was brilliant. The only thing is, next time I will make about a 1/3 less icing. But apart from that, delicious and so easy to make.
Jenny says
Just to add that, due to allergies, I didn't include nuts and we didn't miss them!
Francesca says
Sponge itself is absolutely delicious however I would recommend not adding milk to the icing as it makes it too runny. I added roughly another 70g of icing sugar to the icing to make it thicker and that worked really well. Lovely recipe! 🙂
Katie Taylor says
Made this cake yesterday and iced today for my husbands birthday. I'm not vegan but have an egg intolerance I made it with cow's milk and dairy margarine. I reduced the sugar to 170g as I find vegan cakes to be far too sugary and I reduced the icing sugar to about 200g. It was lovely and moist and the cakes that I've made so far on this site (coffee & walnut and Victoria sponge) have been the best vegan cake recipes for actually rising and being as light as an egg based cake. My only issues were that even with reduced sugar, it was still far too sweet. There are so many other lovely flavours in it that it doesn't need so much sugar. I would probably halve the sugar and similar to another review the icing was very runny and nothing like the image for this cake. Not sure if it's the milk that nots needed, Next time for the icing I might use about 200g of icing sugar and increase the cream cheese slightly and add a some lemon zest into it or vanilla seeds.
Georgia G says
The carrot cake is delicious but the frosting unfortunately ruined it. I followed the frosting recipe and it was already runny without the milk so I omitted that. Went on lovely and thick. Go it out of the fridge this afternoon and it's ran all down the sides and turned the cake into sludge. I'm so disappointed.
I'm going to try with a different margarine but can you tell me what brands you used?
Shadi says
My family is going to love this! Thank you for this amazing recipe.
Nic says
Yum! I loved how easy this carrot cake was to make! Thanks for a great recipe!
Steph says
Thank you so much for this recipe! This is our favourite cake, so delicious that our kids request it for their birthdays every year. This is especially complimentary as our daughter is autistic and has a very limited diet, but this cake makes her so happy. It really is delicious and pretty much foolproof as I'm not the best baker x
Kathryn says
This carrot cake was so moist and delicious! Nobody could even tell this was vegan 🙂 Definitely going to make this again over the summer! Thanks for the recipe!
Kate Ford says
Ah that's great, thanks! X
Kathleen says
Love a great carrot cake like this one. It is a perfect option for a friendly get together or just for my family. Either way everyone is going to love it!
Dana says
This turned out so well, and I love the addition of the pistachios on top! Takes it next level!
Bhauliya says
I've made this carrot cake so many times in so many different ovens and it's always been absolutely delicious. I've actually always done it with oatmilk, coconut sugar and coconut oil. Always turned out fab. I even once tried baking it in the air fryer, I'd not recommend that, but it worked out fine- eventually!! Best carrot cake recipe
Kate Ford says
This is great to hear, thanks so much!
Jules W says
Wonderful recipe, thank you so much for sharing - a lovely moist carrot cake and muffins made 🙂
Kate Ford says
That's great to hear, thanks Jules x
Penelope says
I love this recipe and I'm thinking of using it for muffins. Can anyone recommend any timings/temperatures?
Kate Ford says
Hi Penelope, I've tried this with great success. Same temperature as for a big cake, and start checking your muffins after 18-20 minutes, it really depends on their size and how much you fill the cases. Hope that helps! X