I love carrot cake more than any other cake. Our relationship started in 2003 during my first visit to New Zealand. Perfectly moist carrot cakes – usually with delicious lemon icing – were everywhere: in cafés, rest stops and excursion boats. While my first bite may have been timid, my second was surely greedy.
To me, the concept of putting veg in your cake wasn’t new – after all, Mum had been making her absolutely scrumptious zucchini cake summer after summer – but carrots? Really?
Yes, really.
Actually, I like carrot cake so much that I pretty much insisted it will be one of our wedding cakes.
Can you see true love right there?
Mr A agreed and I proposed it to our bakery. Our bakery does the most wonderful sweet creations. However, so far they’ve barely any experience in baking vegan things. This is about to change, as the lovely manager told me.
“We need challenges”
For the next year, both of us will be working on vegan cakes, exchanging what works and what doesn’t so that come our wedding day we’ll have the most delicious wedding cake imaginable. I’m all optimism.
My first attempt at a vegan carrot cake was a full success with Mr A, coworkers – and myself. It was really simple to make too!
It turned out moist and not too sweet and kept in the fridge for a few days (may have longer, had we not devoured it).
- 100g hazelnuts
- 250g flour
- 200g demerara sugar
- 1 pkg baking powder
- 1 pkg vanilla powder
- 1 ts cinnamon
- pinch of salt
- 2 tbsp cocoa powder
- 50g butter or oil (sunflower or coconut work especially well)
- 150ml almond milk
- 150ml coffee (I used 100ml hazelnut-flavoured Nespresso and 50ml chocolate-flavoured Nespresso coffee)
- 200g shredded carrots
- 2 tbsp maple syrup
- juice and zest of one untreated lemon
- 100g icing sugar
- Mix dry ingredients, then slowly add moist ingredients and whisk until smooth.
- Pour the mixture into a brownie tin and bake it for approximately 30-35mins at 180°C.
- While the cake is baking, whisk lemon juice and icing sugar until combined.
- Let the cake cool down before applying the icing.
- Instead of coffee, you can use tea, juice - or simply add more plant-based milk.
Do you like carrot cake as much as I do? How do you like it best? What are your secrets to getting it the way you like it?
If you share your photos on Instagram, don’t forget to tag @Aliciouslog so I can see them!
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Klingt lecker, aber für heute hab ich genug Kuchenduft 😉
Aber den muss ich mal probieren 🙂 wenn auch mit Espresso aus gemahlenem Kaffee, ganz altmodisch 🙂
Liebe Grüße
Yvi
Mit frisch gemahlenem Kaffee wird’s sicher noch aromatischer <3