Vegan Gluten Free Carrot Cake

4.95 from 75 votes

Vegan Gluten Free Carrot Cake

This vegan gluten free carrot cake is so good no one will ever guess that it's either vegan or gluten-free! It's perfectly moist and packed with flavor for a perfect dessert.

Prep Time30

Cook Time30

Total Time1

Course: Dessert, Gluten-Free

Cuisine: American

Diet: Gluten Free, Vegan

Servings:

Calories: 452kcal

Author: Alison Andrews

Ingredients

For the Carrot Cake:

3 cups Gluten Free All Purpose Flour Blend (408g)
2 cups Light Brown Sugar (400g)
1 ½ teaspoons Baking Soda
1 ½ teaspoons Baking Powder
¾ teaspoon Salt
1 Tablespoon Ground Cinnamon
1 ½ teaspoons Ground Nutmeg
2 Flax Eggs 2 Tablespoons Ground Flaxseed Meal with 6 Tablespoons Hot Water
3 Tablespoons Applesauce
3 ⅓ cups Grated Carrot (366g)
¾ cup Canola Oil (180ml) or Vegetable Oil
2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract
1 ½ Tablespoons Apple Cider Vinegar
1 ½ cups Walnuts (150g) Chopped, Optional

Frosting Options:

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Spray two 8-inch* cake pans with non-stick spray and line the bottoms with parchment paper.
Sift the flour into a mixing bowl and add the brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg and mix together.
Prepare your flax eggs by adding 2 Tablespoons ground flaxseed meal to a bowl and then adding 6 Tablespoons of hot water from the kettle. Leave it to sit for a minute to become gloopy.
Add the flax eggs, applesauce, grated carrot, oil, vanilla extract, apple cider vinegar and chopped walnuts and mix into a thick batter. If it's struggling to come together, just leave the bowl to sit for a couple of minutes and then come back and stir again and it should come together. Leaving it for a minute will allow the grated carrots to release more moisture into the bowl allowing it all to come together.
Divide the batter evenly between the prepared cake tins. Place into the oven and bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out mostly clean. If you have some crumbs on the toothpick, this is fine, but you don't want wet batter.
Let them cool for 5 minutes or so and then remove them from the cake pans and place them onto a wire cooling rack and allow to cool completely before frosting.
Frost with any of the choices of frostings above and decorate with chopped nuts (we used pecans).

Notes

It's very important that you use a gluten-free all purpose flour blend that is intended to replace wheat flours in baking. I have used various brands and all have worked great, the important thing is that it must be a blend.
Weighing ingredients like your flour and grated carrots is going to give you the best chance of a perfect result.
The frosting we used in these photos is our vegan lemon buttercream frosting.
This cake can also be made in 9-inch cake pans. Everything else remains exactly the same, the layers will just be slightly thinner than what you see pictured here. We have tested this as 9-inch and it's perfect.
Nutritional information is for cake only and does not include frosting.

Nutrition