Let's get cooking
Preheat oven to 165 degrees | Bake for 18 minutes
Enjoying revived popularity during rationing in Britain during WWII, the carrot cake is a delicious staple of British baking. Here we have a gluten free, vegan friendly spin on the original that’s a healthier way to enjoy the popular treat.
CARROT CAKE SPONGE printable download
OR shop-bought carrot cake decorations (again, be careful to check the ingredients).
The cake:
The frosting:
The carrots: (editor’s contribution)
This is perhaps the most “involved” part of the process, and whilst you can use shop-bought cake decorations, many do seem to be made with “Royal Icing” which of course traditionally contains egg or even dairy. Therefore you may well have better luck (and less hassle) making your own if you can’t readily find animal-free ones. To make them yourself, the easiest way is using marzipan, and a few drops of orange (or red and yellow) food colouring to get that “carrot” colour. You’ll need to get yourself some thin disposable gloves for this and knead a few drops into your marzipan. From there you can mould it into a ball, roll into a sausage on a chopping board and shape in your hands until you have a “carrot”. Making cake decorations can be quite theraputic and a lot of fun, if you ever modelled plastercine or play-doh as a child, this may well remind you of those times…
For the stalk, you can either colour some marzipan green the same way, shaping by rolling into thin strands which you then need to cut into 4 short lengths. Bend the strands into v-shapes and push together. Make a hole in the top of your carrot and push your “stalk” in to complete your decoration. Alternatively, push some short pieces of de-leafed parsley stalks into the ends of your carrots (as long as you’re not going to leave them hanging around for ages out of the fridge as you don’t want them to wilt!)
Another option if you don’t want to “get your hands dirty” (although you probably have already making your cakes 🙂 ) then buy pre-made edible starch-based vegan cake decorations online such as these if you wish. I’ve not personally used these ones, but they do look like they could be worth a try.
You will need