Coco's Carrot Cake

I finally baked something! Raise your hand if you approve! After hours, days, months of drooling over other blogs' sweet food porn pictures, I finally found the perfect opportunity to bake my favourite cake: packed with carrots, walnuts, a lot of spice and everything nice. I already mentioned before that tomorrow I'll be singing at an Amy Winehouse Tribute Session. Host and organizing wonderwoman of this session is my friend and Very Good Singer Coco. Within a week she managed to get together a whole band, with horn section and everything, and about 15 vocalists all singing their own favourite Amy song. So for rehearsals today, I chose to contribute by bringing everyone the joy of CAKE. And it worked, the thing was more popular than me, even though I was sporting a red dress and matching lipstick. Let's hope some of it's shine'll stay with me on stage tomorrow.

I roughly followed the recipe by Hell Yeah It's Vegan and made a few alterations, inspired by the carrot cake in Lisette's Ecofabulous book. Less oil, more applesauce, less sugar and more coconut. And MORE SPICE because I like it like that. There we go! (You see a part is missing from the cake? No idea how that happened, it certainly has nothing to do with me wanting to try the cake and not being able to stop 'trying' little pieces and hoping noone would notice. I swear.)

Coco's Vegan Carrot Cake

2 1/2 cups pastry flour (I used spelt)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
3 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp ground nutmeg
2 tsp allspice (piment)
1 tsp vanilla
3 tbsp ground flaxseed mixed with
1/2 cup warm water
3 egg substitutes (No Egg or EnerG)
1/2 cup sunflower oil
1/2 cup agave syrup
1 cup applesauce
2 cups shredded carrots
1 thumb fresh ginger, grated
1 cup walnuts, chopped
3/4 cup shredded coconut
1 pack Tofutti Creamcheese
1 1/4 cup powdered sugar
juice and zest of 1 lemon

Preheat the oven to 350F (gas mark 4). Cover the bottom of a 24cm baking pan with parchment paper, grease the sides with sunflower oil and dust with a little flour. Mix together the flour with the spices and baking powder and soda. In a large bowl, mix up the flax 'eggs', the egg substitutes, oil, agave and applesauce. Gradually stir in the dry ingredients until fully dissolved. Finally fold in the carrots, walnuts, ginger and coconut. It'll have the consistency of a thick cake batter. Pour into prepared pan and bake for about 40/45 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.

When completely cool, whip up a frosting with the creamcheese, sugar, lemonjuice and zest and cover the cake. Enjoy with your friends while singing along to some Amy Winehouse.