Vegan Carrot Cake

This was the first vegan cake recipe I have tried! It's pretty easy to make and everything looked and smelled good before I popped it into the oven. Ingredients included flour, sugar, baking powder and soda, nutmeg, cinnamon, oil, sugar, maple syrup (I used agave nectar since maple syrup is tricky and can be non-vegan at times), pineapple juice, and shredded carrots.

The true test was to see how it baked and the texture and moistness of the cake.

The cake rose well and the texture was nice and moist! It is a more delicate cake and not too sweet which I prefer. I think when paired with a frosting, the cake is fine as is and does not need to be sweeter.

I made a basic "buttercream" frosting which was way too sweet for me so I have some experimenting to do in that department. I am going to try a vegan cream cheese frosting next time. I also found some vegan marshmallow creme! I am going to try to use that to make buttercream next time. Will keep you posted!

Vegan Sugar

I didn't realize sugar was not vegan until I did a little bit of research. Bone char- which is made of cow bones- is used to whiten the sugar which makes it a non-vegan friendly product.

There are certain brands of sugar that do NOT use bone char in their processing; the list can be found here: http://www.vegfamily.com/articles/sugar.htm/

Raw and turbinado sugar are vegan as well.

But leave it to Whole Foods to make my life that much easier by having Vegan Sugar as one of their products! Another plus is that it is Fair Trade Certified! I love it. Learn more about the importance of purchasing Fair Trade products here: http://www.transfairusa.org/

I used it to bake my first vegan cake- a carrot cake (which I will be posting now :)