Best Vegan Carrot Cake Recipe - Little Sunny Kitchen (2024)

FAQs

Why is my carrot cake not fluffy? ›

The key to a soft and fluffy carrot cake is to have the carrots bake into the crumb. If you coarsely grate the carrots, then they will not bake as quickly and will stay as threads through the cake which can get stuck in your teeth. For maximum flavor and the best texture, you'll need to grate them finely.

When a cake is wet in the middle it is because the edges have cooked faster than the centre. This happens because of the way the cake cooks naturally in the tin – the sides of the cake tin heat up first.

However, too many mix-ins can lead your carrot cake down a dense and heavy path, and that's a baking detour you might want to avoid. While the idea of a loaded carrot cake is tempting, the reality is that the weight and moisture from an excess of mix-ins can result in a cake that seems like it's part brick.

Carrot cake usually contains more saturated fat than fruit cake thanks to the frosting, which is typically made from cream cheese. The higher fat content also means it's higher in calories. Carrot cake is lower in fibre, so may not be as filling.

Most cakes begin with creaming butter and sugar together. Butter is capable of holding air and the creaming process is when butter traps that air. While baking, that trapped air expands and produces a fluffy cake. No properly creamed butter = no air = no fluffiness.

The most crucial tip? Instead of buying an entire box of cake flour, simply incorporate two tablespoons of cornstarch into 3 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour. This blocks the formation of gluten in the flour, which produces a lighter, fluffier cake.

Carrot cake is oil-based, rather than butter-based. This keeps it moist and helps it last for days. Unfortunately, it also means you lose the leavening power that creaming butter and sugar would bring. (Creaming, or beating together the two ingredients on high speed, aerates the butter.)

It's true that carrots are the star of the show, but aim for finely grated pieces rather than chunky. The finer you grate the carrots, the more evenly they will be distributed throughout the cake (for the perfect texture), and the more evenly the cake and the carrots will bake.

If you like raisins in your carrot cake, it should. And if you don't, it shouldn't. Sigrid kept them out of hers, and so have I. Some people also like nuts—chopped walnuts or pecans—baked into the cake whereas I prefer to keep them in the frosting!

Carrots contain pigments that are sensitive to changes in pH balance. When the shreds of carrot come into contact with the alkaline baking soda, a chemical reaction takes place that causes the pigments to change color.

Why does carrot cake need so much oil? ›

However some cakes, such as Nigella's Ginger And Walnut Carrot Cake use oil, or a combination of oil and butter. Butter is only 70-80% fat and the rest is water and butter solids. Using oil in cakes reduces the amount of water in the mixture and can mean a moister cake with a tender crumb.

Using baking powder (a chemical leavening agent) often becomes tricky. How much is enough to leaven dense, oil-based cakes like carrot cake? Sometimes, we end up using too much baking powder to help this type of cake rise, and this mistake can unfortunately make them taste bitter or like chemicals.

Unhealthiest: Cheesecake

Depending on where you order or buy your cheesecake, one slice can have anywhere between 300 and 1,000 calories!

Harold McGee, author of On Food and Cooking, explains that carrots turn green when the batter “contains too much baking soda, or when the soda isn't evenly mixed in the batter.” Carrots contain pigments that are sensitive to changes in pH balance.

There's too much liquid in the batter

Adding a liquid (such as plant-based milk) to your cake batter is great to add extra moisture and prevent crumbling. However, if you add too much, your vegan cake will turn out dense and stodgy. The fat-to-flour-to-vegan milk ratio has to be perfectly balanced.

One of the key factors that can lead to dense cakes is the incorrect ratio of ingredients. Baking is a science, and even a small deviation from the recipe can have a big impact on the final texture of your cake. Too much flour or not enough leavening agents like baking powder can result in a dense cake.

The leavening agent is the ingredient that helps the cake to rise. Too much baking powder or baking soda can create excess gas in your cake, making it expand too quickly without the proper structure, only to deflate once you take it out of the oven.

Add a leavening agent to the flour. Most cakes will call for a leavening agent like baking powder or baking soda. These create the bubbles you need for the cake to rise. If the flour you use is self-raising, it already has a leavening agent in it.

Add structure. On their own, boxed cake mixes have a structure that's loose and airy. But if you add ¼ cup flour or half a box of instant pudding mix, the texture of the cake becomes denser and tighter, ideal for a pound-cake-like consistency that will hold the shape of a Bundt pan.