This week a new staff member joined my team and we were organizing a little welcome gathering for her. My original plan had been to buy some pastries at our really nice local Mexican bakery. But then I found out that our new colleague has a gluten intolerance.
Very last minute, I decided to try to bake a gluten free carrot cake. I used the recipe from the Minimalist Baker, which was absolutely perfect https://minimalistbaker.com/1-bowl-vegan-gluten-free-carro…/. By the way, this is a website that I absolutely recommend. All their recipes are truly stellar! #minimalistbaker
Inevitably, I made a few tweaks to the recipe. As I did not have brown rice flour in stock, I increased the mount of white rice flour (not the precious brand that I use for my vegan steamed cheeses but the stoneground rice flour from Bob’s Red Mill). I did add Xantham gum to the flour mixture. Another small tweak was to add both raisins and walnuts as I was unable to choose between the two.
For the frosting, I used one stick of vegan butter, 1 cup of soaked cashews (blended with just enough water to get a liquid mixture), pineapple jam, lemon extract, vanilla extract, and icing sugar. True to form, I did not measure any of the latter ingredients but rather relied on taste and feeling for the right consistency. I kept the frosting in the fridge overnight which helped with it firming up.
As I was unsure how the frosting would hold, I only frosted the cake in the morning, just before taking it to work. The orange “roses” that I put on the cake were made with thinly sliced strips of carrots. Very fiddly work at 6:30 am but otherwise quite eye catching!
The cake came out lovely moist and absolutely delicious! At the end of the days, there were only some crumbs left for me to take home.
Happy vegan cooking and eating!
Cilantro Roots - adventures in growing & creating vegan food 
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