

This vegan California Carrot Cake with Fluffy Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting is beyond dreamy. It is studded with walnuts, hearty carrot shreds and accented with cinnamon, vanilla and citrus. It bakes up with the perfect fork-diving texture. And it is delicious a few days later as leftovers. Midnight snack approved!

Carrot cake has always been one of my favorite desserts and today’s recipe impressed my very high standards.

And every dreamy cake-eating-sesh deserves a good moody scene. Midnight cake craving, the light of the fridge and a fork in your hand. Or maybe a Sunday brunch with girlfriends, carrot cake muffins all around. Or a boring old Monday, made better by baking a cake, eaten after dinner while watching Netflix in your PJs. For me today, it is fog and movie music (soundtracks are my fave to work to), cats napping, the gently whoosh of my IQAir and the hum of my Roomba spinning in the other room. Romantic, eh? I’ll take it.

Foggy Days. Looking outside my window, 4:40pm on a Friday, I can see thick white fog rolling in, again. There has been an abundance of fog the past few weeks here in Los Angeles and oh-my-goodness “beach fog” is my favorite kind of weather. Mostly because it reminds me of the neighborhood I grew up in, in NorCal. Fog on most mornings, or at least a dewey beach mist in the air.

Don’t get me wrong, I love sunshine, who doesn’t? But the fog is almost magical to me. It reminds me of far off places, fairytales, moody scenes and deep thoughts. No wonder they have a ‘fog machine’ as a thing for movie making! One of my favorite photos I have ever shot is of a foggy scene in Lucerne, Switzerland, an ancient bridge and tower in the background, a swan swirling in a still, mirrored lake. White sky, fog hovering. The photo sits right above my desk in a frame.

But enough fog, back to this cake! Oh wow. I have no shame in the fact that I had three carrot cake donuts for lunch yesterday — and nibbled some last night after dinner and again today. I will have more tonight and hopefully get my husband to eat more of this stuff because I certainly cannot eat it all! (He is a more chocolate-dessert person, but he did taste this and loved it.) If all else fails, I will freeze a few slices. Cake actually freezes very well, so for tiny families like ours, you can bake a whole cake and enjoy it slowly.

Donuts or cake? Your choice!..



This cake is a classic carrot cake, gone vegan and with some healthy upgrades. To sweeten things, I went with Medjool dates and some maple syrup. For flour, I did a mix of whole wheat and oat flour. For the egg replacer I went with silken tofu and also the fiber from the dates and orange help bind things too. The walnuts add healthy fats add even more texture. This cake is loaded with amazing texture!



Frosting. For the frosting, I went simple. I used coconut milk and vegan cream cheese and a bit of powdered sugar – but not too much, as frosting recipes come. The result is a very light and fluffy, sweet, yet cream-cheese-tart frosting. I used Kite Hill Cream Cheese, which I highly recommend. The tart cheesy flavor and texture is the best I have tried as vegan cream cheeses come.

Donuts or cake or muffins? The beauty of this recipe is that you can use the batter however you’d like. You can do muffins, a round cake, sheet cake, donuts, loaf – whatever! I used an 8 x 8 inch baking dish for one part and then used the leftover batter for about 4 donuts. I guess the only trouble with this is really paying attention to the baking time for your cake. It will vary based on the size of vessel.

Ok, ok enough rambling.. go make and eat this! And happy almost-spring bunnies! Or kitties..