Carrot Cake and Cashew Creme Frosting: Vegan, A+
- December 2009
- Recipes
This is my trusty carrot cake recipe, which I always use for people’s birthdays. It is healthy!
If I want it to be a sure thing with no glitches, I make a normal wheat version. Good friends get experimented on with non-wheat attempts, but everyone always eats it and likes it even when it’s pretty dense 🙂
When I tell people that there is truly nothing bad or fattening in it, everyone starts to go back for seconds. People who are diabetic are thrilled to get to eat the birthday cake at a party, with this one. The frosting will let you get away with a lot, if you’ve experimented on the cake 😉
Carrot Cake
1 cup unbleached flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
(I keep trying various blends of non wheat flour and getting extremely dense cakes, but if you use wheat it will turn out very nice. And if you get a good non-wheat blend, please let me know!)
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon each ginger, cloves, nutmeg
1/4 cup powdered soy milk (or regular)
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 cup raisins
mix all these together
2 eggs equivalent of egg replacer, or 2 eggs
1 cup maple syrup or honey
1/2 cup applesauce (natural, no sugar)
2 cups shredded carrot
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
mix all these together, add dry ingredients
bake at 375 until done (will take longer without wheat flour)
You can oil and flour two round cake pans for birthday cake, or make it in a square pan for a one-layer, easy version.
Cashew Creme frosting
2/3 cup coconut milk, or more
1-2 cups raw cashews
1/2-1 cup pitted dates, chopped up, the gooier the better
1-2 teaspoon vanilla
2-4 Tablespoons maple syrup or honey
optional: 1 container tofu cream cheese or Neufchatel cheese
put everything in a food processor or blend with a stick blender. Keep tasting to decide what to add, and make big or small amounts, depending on if you made a two layer cake or one layer cake.
If this is a birthday cake, decorate the top with raisins and walnuts, and you will get style points.
Thanks! A friend’s birthday is tomorrow and she loves carrots cake and she will be over joyed with the cashew icing. You saved the day.
I hope it turned out delicious 🙂
Well, it still does contain white flour, so the “nothing bad in it” is not true! All in all, a very very good (and relatively very healthy) variation.
As for non-wheat flour, I haven’t tried it, but I have read a lot of praise for Bob’s Red Mill’s product, called something like “Gluten Free 1-1 Flour”.