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.
One of the most popular recipes on this blog is our vegan carrot cake.
But it’s not gluten-free. Many have tried it using gluten-free flour and had success, but I wanted to do a version that is designed as gluten-free so that it’s as delicious as it can possibly be and this is it.
No one would ever know that this cake is either vegan or gluten-free never mind both.
It is perfectly moist with all that delicious signature carrot cake spiciness and texture.
Want to make cupcakes instead? You’ll love our vegan gluten free carrot cake cupcakes.
You’ll also love our fabulous vegan gluten free chocolate cake.
How To Make Vegan Gluten Free Carrot Cake
You will find full instructions and measurements in the recipe card at the bottom of the post. This is a summary of the process to go along with the process photos.
- Add gluten free all purpose flour to a mixing bowl along with brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg and mix together.
- Then add in grated carrot, flax eggs (ground flaxseed meal mixed with hot water), applesauce, oil, vanilla, apple cider vinegar and chopped walnuts and mix into a thick batter.
- Divide between two 8-inch (you can also use 9-inch) prepared cake pans and bake for 30-35 minutes.
- Let the cakes cool for a few minutes in the pans and then transfer them to a wire cooling rack to cool completely before frosting and decorating.
The Frosting
There are several frosting options that would work great for this cake. We used our vegan lemon buttercream frosting in these photos. And the flavor blend of lemon frosting with carrot cake really works.
You can also use our vegan buttercream frosting recipe or our vegan cream cheese frosting.
Ingredient Notes
Use a gluten-free all purpose flour blend. This is super important, this recipe has been designed around using a blend, not a single type of flour like almond flour or rice flour. So it’s important that you use a blend as well. If you use a single type of flour then I can’t be sure at all if it will work out.
You can use any vegetable oil or canola oil. I also tested it with extra virgin olive oil and coconut oil. Both of those also work great but coconut oil makes it harder to stir in since this is a very thick batter.
The walnuts are optional. I think chopped walnuts add something wonderful here and we decorated the cake with chopped pecans but if you’re nut-free you can leave them out with no issues.
Baker’s Tips
Weigh ingredients like flour and grated carrots. This is going to give you the best chance of accuracy in this recipe. If you don’t have a food scale, I highly recommend one. They are really a baker’s best friend in the kitchen.
Be patient when mixing this batter. You might think I’ve forgotten an ingredient when you see how thick the batter is, but just leave the bowl for a minute, and let those carrots release extra moisture into the batter and then come back and stir again and suddenly it will turn into a batter.
You can make it in either 8-inch or 9-inch pans. We tested it in both sizes and it works great for both. What you see pictured here is 8-inch cake layers, but as you can see the layers are nice and fat, so it does adapt to 9-inch cake pans as well, you just have slightly thinner layers, but it still totally works.
Storing Tips
It stays fresh for a couple of days at room temperature, and around 5 days covered in the fridge. It is also freezer friendly for up to 3 months so if you want to freeze it, go right ahead.
More Vegan Cakes
- Vegan Banana Cake
- Vegan Vanilla Cake
- Best Vegan Chocolate Cake
- Vegan Apple Cake
- Vegan Red Velvet Cake
- Vegan Pound Cake
Did you make this recipe? Be sure to leave a comment and rating below!
Vegan Gluten Free Carrot Cake
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
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.
Hi Alison just wondering if this can be cooked as cupcakes? Thank you
Hi K, we have an awesome recipe for gluten free carrot cake cupcakes, rather check that out, it’s perfectly designed for cupcakes.
Thanks so much!
Hi Alison, love your generous recipe. I halve the sugar (1 cup instead of 2 cups) and it seems fine. Also, I add ginger, and it works well. I’ve just made this cake again for my niece’s birthday, and I’ll add some ginger jam between the upper and lower layers, and dry roast the decorative walnuts. Thanks for your work, PJ, Tasmania, Australia.
Hi! I’m just wondering if this recipe would come out ok if I baked it in two 6 inch round pans? thanks!
Hi Melissa, no you would need to halve the recipe for that! Or bake it in four 6-inch cake pans.
The best gluten free, vegan carrot cake I have ever made. I needed one for a party that we were going to, and it was a huge hit. I used sugar substitute for the brown sugar, and instead of 1 1/2 cups of walnuts used 1/2 cup golden raisins, 1/2 cup of walnuts and 1/2 cup of pecans. Thanks for the great recipe!
Awesome Nora! Thanks so much!
Another top recipe. I used palm sugar and only 300g as 400g seemed so much to me and our family often finds cakes ‘too sweet’. With this alteration the texture of the cake was still moist and great for us! I used 50:50 ratio of oat flour and mocaf cassava flour and was happy with the result. Paired with your vegan Lemon buttercream. Thank you for another great recipe !
Wonderful, thanks so much for sharing your adjustments Mo!
Hello and thanks for your recipes. Can this cake be made without nuts as our grandson has a nut allergy, without replacing with anything else or if needed what can you replace nuts with and in what quantity. I baked your vegan gluten free carrot muffins using ground chia seeds as egg replacer as he also has a sensitivity to flax seeds and they turned out very good. Diane
Hi Diane, you can just leave out the nuts, no need to replace them with anything. So happy you’ve been enjoying the recipes!
Recently I learned that I needed to cut gluten, dairy, eggs and potato from my diet. In December I had been asked if I would participate in my works Christmas treat share. Now I know they really like my baking but that was before I had to cut out all of the above. I didn’t let this stop me though and I decided to bake a gluten free, vegan, nightshade free item. I came across your Carrot Cake recipe, and having never made Carrot Cake before, I thought, why not give it a whirl.
Needless to say, my co-workers had no idea that the cake was gluten free or vegan. They thought it tasted great. (I personally thought it was a bit sweet and would reduce the sugar a bit in the future but everyone else said not to change a thing.)
I wanted to say, thank you so much for sharing such a great recipe! I will definitely be making this again.
So glad it was a success MJ! Thanks so much for the great review.
Since some carrot cake recipes also have pineapple and raisins, I am wondering how to go about adding the pineapple since it would seem to add a bit more moisture. I feel adding raisins would not affect the recipe.
Thanks!
Hi Rose, yes you’re right you can go ahead and add raisins without any issue, for the pineapple if you’re using crushed pineapple you could use that instead of the applesauce (3 tablespoons). If you wanted to add more pineapple, you could replace one of the flax eggs as well, so use 1 flax egg and another 3 tablespoons of crushed pineapple for a total of 6 tablespoons of crushed pineapple.
This recipe worked great thank you! Just wondering whether this would work with half the sugar? My partner found it a bit sweet! Thank you
Hi Krishna, you can try reducing the sugar but just keep in mind that the sugar isn’t just for sweetness, it’s also for texture, so definitely try reducing it but don’t reduce it too far! 🙂
I used Bob’s Red Mill 1-1 baking blend. Cake turned out great everyone enjoyed it. Was a bit heavier than regular carrot cakes I have made in the past, so when I make it again I will do thinner layers using 3 8 inch pans instead of the 2. Paired it with the suggested vegan cream cheese frosting which I flavored with lemon and it was perfect.
Wonderful! Thanks so much for sharing Ann!
Made this twice and each time the cake stuck to the pan, and had to cook for double the time as even then the cake wasn’t cooked. I’m pretty sure I followed each step not sure where I went wrong 🙁
Hi V, definitely always use parchment paper circles at the bottoms of your pans and also spray well with non-stick spray. Taking too long to cook though sounds like an oven temp issue. We use an oven thermometer and it is SO helpful.
Hi Alison, it sounds delicious, can I use palm sugar instead of brown sugar?
Yes that should work great! 🙂
Unsweetened or regular applesauce?
Either/or is fine here.
Can I use regular all purpose flour that is not gluten free?
Yes you can!
Dear Alison, loved the recipe but could you tell me which gf flour blend do you use as I always have trouble finding a good blend thanks
I really like Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Baking Flour. 🙂