California Carrot Cake with Fluffy Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting
This fluffy and deliciously textured vegan carrot cake contains walnuts, loads of carrot shreds and a hint of cinnamon, citrus and vanilla. Coconut cream cheese frosting on top.
Servings: 1 square cake
Ingredients
Dry:
- 1 ½ cups whole wheat pastry flour
- 1 ½ cups oat flour
- 1 ½ tablespoon baking powder
- 1 tablespoon cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon sea salt
Wet:
- 7 Medjool Dates, pitted and lightly soaked in hot water
- 7oz. silken tofu
- 1 medium orange, peeled (about 1 cup of segments) **I used a Sumo mandarin orange citrus, which is seedless and sweet. Seedless or low seed oranges are preferred here.
- ¼ cup vegetable oil (I used virgin melted coconut oil)
- ½ cup maple syrup
- ¼ - ½ teaspoon fresh orange zest
Fold in:
- 1 cup raw walnuts
- 2 cups shredded organic carrots, packed well
- optional: ⅓ cup organic raisins
Frosting:
- 1 14oz. can full fat coconut milk, fully chilled in fridge
- 1 8oz. package vegan cream cheese, plain (Kite Hill Used)
- 2 cups organic powdered sugar
- optional: ⅛ teaspoon cream of tarter (to help stabilize the frosting)
- optional: ⅛ teaspoon vanilla extract or a vanilla bean (super fancy option)
- Grease pan: vegan butter or coconut oil
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degree. Grease your pan, generously. I used an 8 x 8 inch square baking dish and also made three donuts.
- Grate your carrots, set aside. If you carrots were wet or really moist, you may want to squeeze any excess water out of them with a paper towel, but in general, carrots from the store tend to be on the dry side - which is good for carrot cake.
- Soak your pitted dates in hot tap water for at least two minutes. Drain water.
- Add all the wet ingredients to a blender container, including the soaked dates. Blend from high to low until smooth.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine all the dry ingredients, toss well.
- Pour the wet mixture into the dry bowl. Using a mixer, beat on low until the batter is thick and smooth. It should be a bit thicker than a normal cake better from all the fiber we have added so far - from the orange and dates and whole grain flours. Plus, adding the carrots will soften things up a bit.
- Fold in the carrots and the walnuts and optional raisins.
- Pour the batter into the baking dish(es). For an 8 x 8 pan, I baked at 350 degrees for about 35 minutes. The donuts baked in just about ten minutes. (Note: I was used a convection bake setting which bakes a tiny bit faster than a normal bake setting.)