vegan carrot cake traybake
Recipe Tuesday | a cake for springtime
It finally feels like spring, and I couldn’t be happier. With the changing seasons, though, the foods I gravitate towards change too. A rich, dense sticky toffee pudding with caramel sauce, for example, is exactly what I want on a cold winter’s night, but I don’t long for it on a spring afternoon. In fact, if I had to pick the cake best suited to springtime, it would be a moist, fresh carrot cake adorned with a light cream cheese icing. Carrots are coming into season, and I want them both in their refreshing savoury form and grated into richly spiced cakes.
And this is, indeed, richly spiced - if you prefer a barely-there approach to spice, this might not be for you. It also isn’t overly sweet, as I like the cream cheese icing to retain a tartness to it that I find to be disappointingly lost in over-sugared commercial cream cheese icings (what value is there in creating my own recipes if I can’t make things exactly to my own taste?)… this is moist, light, and bursting with well-balanced flavour, if I say so myself.
Why a traybake, you ask? In truth it doesn’t have to be a traybake, you can bake them in any tin you like, or even turn them into cupcakes (with a greatly reduced cooking time). But the cut-and-come-again nature of a traybake makes things easier if you have people round. You can cut them into small squares or large depending on the crowd, and bundle up slices to send people away with. It just feels easier to feed a crowd that way, somehow.
Makes c. 12 slices
Ingredients
For the cake:
3 tbsp ground flaxseed + 9 tbsp water
225ml vegetable oil or sunflower oil (or any other neutral-flavoured oil you have to hand)
zest + juice of 2 oranges
100g sultanas
220g carrot, grated
100g pecans
275g self-raising flour
200g light brown sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp ground allspice
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
For the icing:
450g vegan cream cheese
50g icing sugar
1 tbsp pure maple syrup
pinch ground cinnamon (optional)
anything decorative you want to add!
Method
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C (fan). Grease the baking tray of your choosing - something around the 24cm/9inch mark is about right. I used a rectangular-shaped tray of about that capacity.
Add the sultanas, orange juice and orange zest to a small bowl and microwave it for about a minute - you want the sultanas to start to swell and absorb the orange juice. Once microwaved, leave the bowl to one side for now.
Combine the flaxseed and water in a mug - stir together and set aside.
Once the oven is hot, place the pecans on a baking tray and toast them at 160 for 3-4 minutes, or until darkened and toasty (be careful, they burn easily!) - leave to cool then roughly chop them.
Meanwhile, in a large bowl stir together the self-raising flour, light brown sugar, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and all the spices.
Mix the oil into the mug of flaxseed mix, and stir well to combine. Pour this flaxseed-oil mix into the large bowl of dry ingredients and stir well to combine. Then add the grated carrot, sultanas and chopped toasted pecans. Mix well.
Once everything is well combined, pour the mixture into the prepared baking tin. Bake at 160 (fan) for 30-35 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool completely.
Once the cake is completely cool, make the icing. Beat the cream cheese with electric beaters, if you have them, then add in the icing sugar and maple syrup and cinnamon, if adding, and continue to beat until smooth and spreadable. Spread the icing evenly over the cake, and serve or store in the fridge.
Currently…
Reading: North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (someone on Goodreads called it Pride & Prejudice for socialists, and I can’t unsee it)
Eating: chilled stewed rhubarb (I stewed it down with freshly squeezed orange juice, maple syrup, and chia seeds). Delicious with sliced fresh strawberries & vanilla coconut yogurt
Enjoying: roasted broccoli salads. Niche but that’s my thing lately