Delicious and super easy vegan carrot cake muffins with all the spice and flavour of carrot cake just in a more portable form!

Topped with a lovely lemon icing and chopped pistachios these are perfect to enjoy with your morning coffee or as an afternoon treat!

If you’ve ever wondered why you put vegetables in sweet baked goods, well, there are a couple of reasons.  One, it’s a good way to get extra veg into the veggie averse without them really noticing.  Or caring – I promise you can’t taste the carrot.  Veggies also add another level of sweetness and moisture to a cake batter.

According to the World Carrot Museum of Skipton, England, carrot cakes have been around for centuries.  And carrots aren’t in carrot cake because people want to eat a cake that tastes like carrot.  Carrots have a natural sweetness and during the middle ages sugar and other sweeteners were difficult or expensive to come by in Britain.  So carrots have long been used as sugar substitutes.

Carrot cake muffins are just carrot cake in a more transportable form!  You can also pop any spares in the freezer for whatever carrot cake muffin emergency might arise 😉

Let’s talk vegan muffin ingredients:

Like any good recipe it ALL starts with the right ingredients.

Carrots – any type of carrot can be used.  I don’t even peel them if they’re young enough, just a good scrub is all that’s needed.  The ultimate would be to use your own home grown carrots!  Grate them on a fine grater, like the one you’d use for grating parmesan.  This just means there’s finer pieces of carrot – and thus less likely to be noticed by picky eaters.

Spices – cinnamon is the most commonly used spice in carrot cake type baking.  I’ve also added nutmeg but ginger, cardamom and even turmeric can be used.

Sultanas – I love finding a juicy sultana in a bite of deliciously soft muffin.  They’re like fruity jewels.  Full of iron and antioxidants too.

Apple cider vinegar – vinegar might seem a strange addition but when combined with the baking soda it causes a chemical reaction and helps leavening – replacing eggs as raising agents in vegan baking.

Pistachios – while walnuts are the traditional nut when it comes to carrot cake, I had spare pistachios and no walnuts.  So pistachios it is.  Feel free to use walnuts, pecans or even nothing to top the frosting if nuts aren’t your thing or you’re intolerant.

How to make vegan carrot muffins:

Start with the wet ingredients – whisk together the milk, oil and vinegar and set aside.  The vinegar also reacts with the milk to make something like buttermilk, giving the finished vegan muffins a richer flavour.

In a large bowl add the flour, sugar, bicarbonate of soda and spices give a quick whisk.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix well with a spatula, stirring up from the bottom of the bowl to make sure there are no ‘pockets’ of flour.  Then stir in the grated carrot and walnuts, making sure they’re well incorporated.

Scoop or spoon into your muffin cases, filling each one roughly 3/4 full.

Bake for 25 minutes in a preheated oven or until a cocktail stick inserted in the centre of one of the muffins comes out clean with no raw batter clinging to it.

Leave to cool in the tin for 5-10 minutes before lifting onto a cooling rack to cool completely.

Once cooled mix together the icing sugar with the lemon extract and enough water to make a thickish, spreadable paste.  Add the water a little bit at a time until the right consistency.  If it’s too thin, just add a bit more icing sugar as it will run off and down the sides of the muffins rather than sitting nice and pretty on top!

Dollop a little of the icing on top of a muffin and spread across the top.

Before the icing dries, sprinkle over the roughly chopped nuts, then tear off the muffin case and chomp, chomp, chomp.

Looking for even more vegan lemon recipes?  Try these:

Lemon blueberry baked donuts

Lemon poppy seed cake

Blueberry twisty bread with lemon cream cheese frosting

Blueberry lemon rustic tarts

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