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
- 2¼ cups flour (half spelt or wheat, half all-purpose)
- 3 teaspoons baking powder (*see note below)
- 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
- 1 cup cane sugar
- ½ cup melted coconut or canola oil
- 2 cups grated carrots
- ½ cup raw macadamia nuts (soaked, drained and rinsed)
- ½ cup raw cashews (soaked, drained and rinsed)
- ¼ cup almond milk
- ¼ cup maple syrup
- 2 tablespoons coconut oil
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
- ½ teaspoon salt
- Preheat the oven to 350°F and grease a 9x13 baking pan.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together the applesauce, almond milk, vanilla, sugar and oil.
- Mix the dry ingredients into the bowl with the wet ingredients.
- Fold in the carrots and stir until just combined.
- Bake for 30 to 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let cake cool completely before frosting.
- Make the frosting: combine all frosting ingredients into a high speed blender. 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.
- Chill for at least 30 minutes before spreading. (It will firm up a bit).
- Store frosted cake in the fridge.
**Soak your cashew and macadamia nuts for at least 3 to 4 hours, preferably overnight, then drain and rinse before using. I recommend using a very high speed blender (vitamix, blendtec, or similar). For a more traditional frosting, use the frosting in this recipe using vegan butter and vegan cream cheese (such as Kite Hill).
The stores are out of all purpose flour. Would you recommend all spelt? Or half spelt, half whole wheat pastry flour? Oat flour? Thanks!
Hi Dana, whole wheat pastry flour or spelt flour will work. I’d stay away from oat flour for this one.
Amazing carrot cake!!! Didn’t have to change a thing. I didn’t have apple sauce so I puréed my own apples:))
I’m so glad you loved it!
I made this recipe today and almost half of the cake is gone because my family loved it so much!! As I am trying to cut back on sugar, I actually used a cup of dates instead (I put them in the blender to make a purée before adding it to the mix) and it worked as well. One quick question: Can the cake be frozen? Thanks for the great recipe!!
Hi Annika, I’m so glad you loved it! Sorry for my slow reply – I’m not sure the frosting will thaw well, but the cake itself can be frozen.
This recipe is perfect! My carrot cake looks exactly like the photos above! Thank you <3
I’m so glad you loved it!
can i add pineapple? my mom used to make a carrot cake that she added canned pineapple and it was so delicous and the moistess cake ever.
Hi Elsa, I haven’t tried it, but this is a really moist cake as it is so I think it might become too moist and not bake properly with pineapple.
thank you for replying, what about if i add less almond, say 3/4 cup and add 1/4 cup of crushed pineapple?
You can try! I just can’t say if it’ll definitely work because I haven’t tested it that way. Let me know how it goes 🙂
Thanks so much for this! It was a real treat.
I’m so glad you loved it!
Hi! Can I make cupcakes with this recipe? if so, how many would I get? Txs!!!!!
This review is for the frosting only, which I used on a spice cake. It was the perfect combination of sweet and tangy, but subtle enough that it didn’t detract from the cake at all. My Vitamix had no problem with it. This will be my go-to frosting for this type of cake.
Hi Alan, I’m so glad you loved it!
I cheated a bit and used a vegan processed frosting as I was testing for the holidays Cake was absolutely perfect. Will use raisins and walnuts next time and will put the effort in to making the frosting.
Thanks for the recipe!
Can I also use canola oil for the frosting?
Hi Jana, coconut oil helps thicken it, so I would stick with that.
For the frosting, do you Melt the coconut oil?
Hi Christina, I don’t. I scoop it while it’s slightly softened (not rock hard), but not melted. Hope that helps!
Hello,
Thank you for this amazing recipe!
I would like to ask you what do you think went wrong with the cake batter – I’ve baked two times with this same recipe in my country and one time when I’ve come to New Zealand and everything went really well theses three times but yesterday I’ve had to throw away the cake batter twice because the batter was so salty… The thing is that I’ve used the same ingredients… What do you think I’ve done wrong?
Thank you!
Hi Bee, the ingredients there (perhaps the baking powder) must be different there so I’m not sure.
Can I make this gluten free and oil free?
I wanted to share my tips for this recipe. I made 12 cupcakes, that came out delicious. My secret to a good cupcake, was to fill the paper liner, put them in the oven and realize that I didn’t add the grated carrots. I quickly took them out of the oven and wrung the papers out and stirred in the carrots, refilled the paper and baked them for 28 minutes. They turned out delicious!
Can you swap almond milk for oat or rice milk? Nut allergy prevents using almond milk
Yep – any type of milk should work just fine!
Made this for my omnivore husband’s b’day yesterday and he loved it! he said he woke up thinking about it this morning. that sure is a huge compliment coming from him.
I made it with just all-purpose flour – any reason spelt would improve the flavor? (I am not much of a baker so don’t know). I couldn’t find unroasted macadamia nuts at TJ’s so instead of macadamia subbed with 1/4 cup pine nuts and 1/4 cup pistachios. Also didn’t soak nuts for hours just in warm water for an hour and half (and used blendtec). I did a two layer round cake with half frosting in the middle and half on top (should have made more frosting for 2 layers).
Next time I want to make a “lower guilt” version with flax eggs and/or coconut yogurt replacing some of the oil, and a healthier sugar alternative.
Hi Mavis, I’m glad you enjoyed the cake! Spelt flour is a tad healthier than regular white flour, but there’s no reason that it would improve the flavor in this cake.
Hi, we like our carrot cake cold. Just wondering how this refrigerates and holds up, would like to make a day ahead if does well in fridge….
Hi Sue, I like my carrot cake cold too – I store this in the fridge after it cools to room temp and it’s great for a few days.
Hi, I just wanted to let you know that this Spanish website has totally stolen your recipe.
http://www.recetasveganas.es/recetas/tarta-de-zanahoria-vegana/
thanks for letting me know!
Thank you for the wonderful recipe. So delicious. I used 1 cup of almond meal and used less of the flour, still came out so well and so moist. Loved it!!!
Made this for fathers day and it was a HIT! I subbed coconut sugar for cane sugar and used about 3/4 cup instead of a full cup. Also subbed avocado oil in place of the coconut oil (in the cake only. I used coconut oil in the frosting) Added a pinch of allspice. Topped with crushed walnuts.
If anything I would say the icing tasted a little too salty at first but I added a pinch of coconut sugar and more almond milk and it levelled out perfectly!
My dad, who is not much of a dessert guy ate two peices!
Hi Krishma, I’m so glad it was a hit!