Vegan carrot cake

Which ingredients to use?

For the cake: 200 g (after being peeled) carrots; 100 g walnuts; 2 egg replacers; 170 g brown sugar; 100 ml olive oil; 5 tbs milk alternative; 200 g cream flour; 1 tsp baking powder.

For the topping: 50 g dark chocolate; ½ tbs coconut oil: 50 g ground sugar.

How I decided to bake vegan?
(Or how I will tend to)

I am not vegan nor vegetarian, but I prefer vegan/vegetarian before the animal products. It was like that the past ten years, alongside that I never liked to eat meat. When it comes to baking, I always think about the cakes/cookies my grandma used to bake: with the fresh eggs from the hens she was always looking after; even now I hear her saying: “The egg yolk from my hens is yellow as much as the ten egg yolks one can buy in the shop!” And that was absolutely truthful. I was considering the more vegan options before, but I was unsure about how the structure and the coherency that the eggs give to the cake can be easily replaced with something that is plant based. Well, to replace the dairy products seems to be easy: since the milk alternative options are expanded and widely available – that indicates the global change – and the butter is replaced more or less frequently with the coconut oil; but what about the eggs? It turned up that the easiness is the same. I bought the replacer mainly based on the potato and tapioca starch. Still, I was uncertain about it until the cake was not ready to be served: the excellency was confirmed!

Imagine: 200 g can replace up to 66 eggs! How fabulous is that?! That means I could bake 33 carrot cakes at the low cost such as 4.5 euro for all the 66 eggs I would usually buy. Trust me: the taste of this carrot cake cannot be overcomed by the carrot cake I used to bake a year ago, with three eggs in it and the cheese glaze on the top;  it is so rich and moist! To think vegan when baking means to overcome the common thinking about the ingrediens one should use to get the best results! Why not to search for the more alternative options?

The preparation of the vegan carrot cake

1 Peele the carrots and grate them. Grind the walnuts, half a way done. Use a 23 cm baking mould: place a baking paper on the bottom, grease the side and dust with the flour. Preheat the oven on 180°C.

2 In a large bowl prepare the two egg replacers (by the instructions on the package), add the brown sugar and mix it very well. Add the olive oil, walnuts and the milk alternative and mix it with the mixer. Sift 100 g of the cream flour with the baking powder and continue mixing.

3 Add the carrots and continue to mix with the spoon. Sift the rest of the flour and mix until well combined. Pour it into the mould and bake for 30 minutes. Make sure it is well baked by checking the very middle of it with the toothpick.

4 After taken out and left to get cold, place it on the plate. Melt the chocolate and the coconut oil on the steam. Leave it a couple of minutes to get cold and add the ground sugar to get a sticky texture. Spred it all over the top of the cake. Additionally, before serving, sprinkle it with the ground sugar/grated chocolate/chopped walnuts. Beware: the cake could be gone within a day!

To conclude — I would like for this post to be inspirational to the ones that are going to read it. For somebody who is so passionate about baking, this decision was not brought in a moment of thinking: I was considering a couple of things. Even the smallest change in someone’s mind can encourage a significant move.