You can choose between silky Swiss buttercream (highly recommend!) or a more traditional vegan cream cheese frosting.
The cake stays moist for 5 days! A guaranteed crowd-pleaser served for Easter, Mother's Day, or as a Birthday Cake.
🧾 Ingredients
Here's everything you need for this delicious vegan carrot cake recipe:
Ingredient Notes
Find the complete list of ingredients, quantities, and instructions in the recipe card at the end of this post.
- Shredded Carrots: Use freshly grated carrots as store-bought lack moisture and often have an unpleasant flavor. Select bright, fresh carrots and peel them before grating.
- Olive Oil: I use EVOO, but you can use neutral vegetable oil (like canola oil or sunflower oil) for a more subtle flavor.
- Spices: A generous helping of ground cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg add so much warmth to the cake.
- Vegan Buttermilk: This is a simple mixture of dairy-free milk and apple cider vinegar, which creates a dairy-free buttermilk replacement and tenderizes the cake. Swap the soy milk for almond milk or oat milk if needed.
- Sugar: A combination of soft brown sugar (light muscovado or coconut sugar works as well) for a moist crumb, and granulated sugar for structure. Note, if you use just brown sugar the texture will be denser.
- Baking Powder and Baking Soda: These leaveners help the vegan carrot cake to rise and become fluffy and light, without using eggs.
- Chopped Walnuts: For crunch and a nutty flavor. You can also use pecans.
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🔪 Instructions
Here are step-by-step images to help guide you through the visuals. When you're ready to make the carrot cake please refer to the detailed printable recipe card at the end of this page for full measurements and written instructions:
Step 1: Whisk the wet ingredients (vegan buttermilk, olive oil, vanilla extract, and orange zest) in a medium bowl.
Step 2: In a separate large mixing bowl whisk the dry ingredients (sugar, all purpose flour, baking soda, baking powder, spices).
Step 3: Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and gently whisk until just combined.
Step 4: With a rubber spatula fold through the grated carrots and walnut pieces.
Step 5: Divide the carrot cake batter between two 8-inch cake pans or three 6-inch cake pans lined with parchment paper and bake in a preheated oven until golden.
Step 6: Prepare a batch of frosting (either dairy-free cream cheese frosting or Swiss buttercream frosting). Once the cakes have cooled completely, assemble them and sandwich them with a layer of buttercream.
Step 7: Assemble the cakes with a layer of frosting between each one. Use the remaining frosting to coat around the sides on top of the cake and smooth everything out with a cake scraper.
Step 8: Garnish the cake with candied walnuts and piped sugar carrots.
💭 Recipe Tips
Measure the recipe in grams. As with all baking, measuring with a kitchen scale will always give you the most accurate results, therefore I highly recommend that you measure the recipe in grams. If you plan on using cups, check out this guide on how to measure flour without a scale on Ambitious Kitchen.
Preheat your oven properly. It's important to get your oven to the correct temperature before baking your cakes. The oven temperature affects the texture, flavor, and browning of the cake. I usually aim to preheat the oven a good 30 minutes before baking.
Use freshly grated carrots. Ever tasted grated carrots from a bag? They are usually dry and have a strange chemical aftertaste. Freshly grated carrots will give you the best flavor and moisture that can be lacking in pre-packaged grated carrots.
Don't be tempted to overmix the batter, you want to mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until they are just about mixed. Then carefully fold in the grated carrots and walnuts. I also recommend that you bake the cakes immediately once the batter has been made, don't leave them sitting on the counter for too long.
Freeze the cake layers between frosting. To help give your cake a strong structure, freeze it for 5 minutes after adding each layer of frosting. This helps to prevent the cake layers from sliding around too!
💬 FAQs
You can create a carrot sandwich cake with 2 x 9-inch pans using the ingredient quantities for 8" cakes. The baking time will be slightly less since the layers will be thinner, so check it at 25-30 minutes.
Yes, you can freeze the baked cakes before frosting them. Make sure they are individually wrapped in plastic wrap before you freeze them. Defrost in the fridge overnight or at room temperature for a few hours.
You can also freeze the cake in ready-sliced portions, in ziplock bags or a freezer-safe container, separating the slices between pieces of parchment.
Totally. You can use any vegan buttercream of your choice. Switch things up with pistachio frosting, coffee buttercream, or brown sugar frosting, or keep it simple with vegan whipped cream.
Store it in an airtight container and refrigerate it for up to 5 days. The cake itself will stay moist at room temperature for 5 days, however, if you plan to eat it on the first day I would refrigerate it so that the frosting doesn't spoil. Then remove the cake from the fridge about 1-2 hours before serving to bring it back to room temperature.
🎂 More Vegan Cakes
📖 Recipe
Vegan Carrot Cake
Ingredients
3x 6-Inch Cakes
- 270 ml (1 cup plus 2 tablespoons) soy milk *note 1
- 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
- 120 ml (½ cup) olive oil *note 2
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 1 tablespoon orange zest
- 300 g (2 ½ cups) all-purpose flour sifted
- 120 g (½ cup) granulated sugar
- 120 g (½ cup) soft brown sugar
- 3 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- 1 ½ teaspoons ground nutmeg
- ½ teaspoon ground ginger
- ½ teaspoon sea salt
- 225 g (1 ¾ cups) carrots freshly grated
- 100 g (1 cup) walnuts finely chopped
2x 8-Inch Cakes
- 340 ml (1 ⅓ cups + 4 teaspoons) soy milk *note 1
- 4 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
- 150 ml olive oil *note 2
- 4 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 4 teaspoons orange zest
- 400 g (3 ⅕ cups) all-purpose flour sifted
- 150 g (¾ cup) granulated sugar
- 150 g (⅔ cup) soft brown sugar
- 4 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 ¼ teaspoons baking soda
- 4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
- ¾ teaspoon ground ginger
- ½ teaspoon sea salt
- 280 g (2 ⅕ cups) carrots freshly grated
- 125 g (1 ¼ cups) walnuts finely chopped
Frosting & Carrot Decorations
- 1 batch vegan Swiss meringue buttercream or cream cheese frosting
- 90 g (¾ cup) powdered sugar
- ½ teaspoon freeze-dried raspberry powder strawberry powder or beetroot powder
- ½ teaspoon ground turmeric
- 1 tablespoon carrot juice
- ½ teaspoon matcha powder
- ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon soy milk
Candied Walnuts (optional)
- 100 g (1 cup) chopped walnuts
- 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
- 1 tablespoon vegan butter
Instructions
- Prepare: Preheat your oven to fan-forced 160°C/320°F or conventional 180°C/356°F. Line the base of three 6" cake tins or two 8" cake tins with a circle of parchment paper and spray the sides with oil spray.
- Make vegan buttermilk: Add the soy milk and apple cider vinegar to a medium bowl, stir, and allow to sit for 10 minutes.
- Mix the wet ingredients: To the buttermilk, add the olive oil, vanilla extract, and orange zest and whisk.
- Mix the dry ingredients: To a separate large bowl, add the flour, granulated sugar, soft brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and sea salt, whisk, and set aside.
- Make the batter: Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and whisk carefully to combine. Do not overmix the batter. With a rubber spatula fold through the grated carrots and chopped walnuts until just combined.
- Bake: Divide the batter into the cake pans. For 6" cakes - bake for 30-40 minutes, for 8" cakes - bake for 35-45 minutes. Check they are ready by inserting a skewer, it should come out clean. If there is still wet batter on the skewer, bake for another 5-10 minutes as needed.Allow the cakes to cool in the tins for 10 minutes and then carefully turn them out onto a cooling rack to cool further.
- Frosting: Prepare a batch of Swiss meringue buttercream. Place one cake layer on a turntable and use an offset spatula to smooth a layer of frosting on top. Freeze for 5 minutes, then repeat with the next cake layer. se the remaining frosting to coat around the sides on top of the cake and smooth everything out with a cake scraper.
- Candied Walnuts: Add walnuts, sugar, and butter to a pan and gently cook for 5-7 minutes, tossing constantly. Once the sugar has melted and the walnuts are fragrant, remove from the heat and transfer to a sheet of parchment to cool. Roughly chop once cool.
- Carrot decorations: For orange mix (60g/½ cup powdered sugar, raspberry powder, turmeric, and carrot juice). For green mix (30g/¼ cup powdered sugar, matcha, vanilla, and milk). Transfer them into separate piping bags and snip off the tip when ready to decorate.
- Decorate: Pipe the carrot designs on the sides of the cake and garnish the top and bottom with chopped candied walnuts, pressing them into the side of the cake with an offset spatula.
Notes
- Soy Milk: Swap for almond milk or oat milk.
- Olive Oil: Or neutral oil like canola (rapeseed) or sunflower oil.
- Cream Cheese Frosting: For an orange version, reduce 225ml fresh orange juice in a saucepan until it is down to 50ml. Then cool it, and slowly drizzle into the frosting while whisking during the final stage.
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