This recipe started as an experiment to see if I could make a gluten-free, dairy-free and egg-free cake. We also had a lot of carrots, since my little girl loves buying carrots at our grocer. So it was only natural to combine the two and make a delicious and light carrot cake.
This cake is lovely on its own, but it is even better with the vanilla-cream and nutmeg icing. I had trouble taking really good pictures of this cake, and tried a few times – each time I had less cake to work with (over the course of 48 hours), because it was extremely popular and everyone kept gobbling it up!
Ingredients
Cake
2 large carrots, grated
250g nutalex lite (or GF, DF margarine equivalent)
1 tbs olive oil
1/3 cup low GI sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
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| Grated Carrot |
2 heaped tsp no-egg (egg substitute)
1 tsp GF baking powder
1 cup GF bread mix (check if DF and Vegan if necessary. I use Easy Bakers)
1 cup fine rice flour ( get this from an Indian grocer as they sell a finer rice flour than the supermarkets.)
2/3 cup – 1 cup rice milk
1/2 nutmeg
1/2 cinnamon stick
12 cup cake cups + tray
Buttercream Icing
1 2/3 – 2 cups icing sugar
4 dessert spoons nutalex ( or equivalent margarine)
grated nutmeg
a few drops of vanilla essence
natural food colour (I used pink and yellow for orange)
water
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| Batter ready to bake |
Method
For cake:
Preheat the oven to a medium 180 degrees Celsius.
Next, grind nutmeg and cinnamon to a fine powder, and then grate the carrots.
In a separate bowl, beat together nutalex, oil and sugar till they are light and creamy.
Add vanilla, and beat till smooth.
Alternate adding in flours (including baking powder and no-egg powder) with rice milk. Beat the batter until smooth and completely combined. The batter should be a little liquid – not like a biscuit batter. Adjust the amount of milk accordingly.
Then add carrots and mix thoroughly. Spoon out into cupcake containers, about 3 large spoons each. The batter should go equally into 12 cupcakes.
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| Carrot cupcakes |
Bake for ~15-19 minutes, or until light brown and springy.
For icing:
Wait till the cupcakes are cool. Then mix nutalex with icing sugar (the icing sugar may need to be sifted to remove lumps). Add a few drops of vanilla essence. Then add colouring and beat till smooth. It may also need a few drops of water to get to a smooth, easily spreadable consistency. Use a knife to roughly spread icing on cakes, and then grate nutmeg on top to finish.