I admit I’ve not done much vegan baking in my time – I remember eons ago making a vegan birthday cake for an order but don’t actually remember anything about the recipe. I have definitely done my research for this Vegan Carrot Cake though. There’s so much to learn! One of my favourite carrot cake recipes uses vegetable or sunflower oil in place of butter so I thought that a good place to start. The real quandary was how to replace the eggs though.
I went with chia seeds instead of eggs. I used the following mixture:
Vegan Egg Replacement
Per egg needed in the recipe:
1 tablespoon chia seeds
3 tablespoons Water (I used it warm out of the kettle)
Stir together and leave to form a gel for 10-15 minutes
Warning: It looks foul! (But doesn’t taste or smell of anything so won’t spoil your cake)
For the topping I used marzipan and a runny lemon icing, complete with mini marzipan carrots. The flavours went so well together and I was amazed how like my usual carrot cake recipe this was. A success! I’m not sure I’ll be veganising many of my recipes any time soon but for now, its good to know I have at least one good vegan cake recipe up my sleeve. If I was making this again, I would do double and make into a layer cake but just for a family dessert, this amount was fine.
| Serves | 8+ |
| Prep time | 30 minutes |
| Cook time | 50 minutes |
| Total time | 1 hours, 20 minutes |
| Dietary | Vegan |
| Meal type | Appetizer, Dessert, Snack |
| Misc | Child Friendly, Pre-preparable, Serve Cold |
| Occasion | Barbecue, Birthday Party, Casual Party |
INGREDIENTS
- 200g Caster Sugar
- 100ml Vegetable Oil
- 2 tablespoons Chia Seeds
- 6 tablespoons Warm Boiled Water
- 1 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
- 200g Self Raising Flour
- 3 Large Carrots (Peeled and Grated)
- 100g Chopped Pecans
- 100g Desiccated Coconut
- 50g Raisins
- 400g Ready Rolled Marzipan
- 100g Icing Sugar
- 1 Medium Lemon
DIRECTIONS
| 1. | |
| Mix together the chia seeds and water and leave for 10-15 to form a gel | |
| 2. | |
| Preheat the oven to 170C and line a 9″ cake tin with baking parchment | |
| 3. | |
| Using an electric mixer, whisk together the sugar and oil. Add the chia seed gel and mix again until combined. | |
| 4. | |
| Stir in the grated carrots, nuts, coconut & raisins | |
| 5. | |
| Gently stir in the flour and spice | |
| 6. | |
| Pour into the tin and bake for 50 minutes. A skewer should come out clean. Leave to cool for about an hour (at least) | |
| 7. | |
| Mix together the icing sugar and the lemon juice. You might need to add a little more juice or water until you get the consistency you like. | |
| 8. | |
| Upturn the cake so the flat base of the cake is on top. Roll the marzipan over the top of cake. It will probably stick itself but if not, brush a little boiled water over the top of the cake | |
| 9. | |
| Spread the icing over the marzipan and decorate with marzipan carrots | |
I love carrot cake and this one is so pretty and a great recipe for when I’ve run out of eggs and want to bake something:-)
This looks delicious! Jon and I are tentatively looking at going vegan over the coming months and I don’t want to miss out on cakes and other baked treats. Will be giving this a go!
I do like a good carrot cake and I have found that moist rich cakes are one of the categories that convert so well to vegan, mum used to make a lot of egg-free cakes for some of our family members who didn’t eat any egg.
Your carrot cake looks gorgeous!
My husband loves carrot cake! Very tempted to try this one and see if he notices the difference. Thanks for sharing!