These Vegan Carrot Cake Pancakes are sweet, nourishing healthy breakfast pancakes perfect for fixing your morning carrot cake cravings. They are also healthy, made without refined sugar, butter, or eggs.
I love making vegan pancakes of all sorts for my kids and to adapt the classic vegan pancakes to the season, like my vegan oat pancakes, banana oatmeal pancakes, or strawberry pancakes. And to get classic fall flavors, I want to marry my Vegan Carrot Cake with pancakes!
These vegan carrot cake pancakes have all the flavors of carrot cakes while keeping the fluffy texture of vegan pancakes. Top them up with whipped cream, pecans, and maple syrup and you’re in for a delicious treat.
Vegan carrot cake pancakes are delicious breakfast pancakes that taste like carrot cake. They are not fluffy pancakes, denser as they use healthy oat flour and contain many grated carrots, raisins, and chopped nuts.
Ingredients and Substitutions
All you need to make these healthy pancakes with carrots are:
- Grated Carrots – depending on your taste, use the thin or large grating attachment of your hand box grater or food processor. I prefer to use the thick side, it adds more texture to the carrot pancakes.
- All-purpose Flour – you can use gluten-free all-purpose flour if needed.
- Oat Flour – follow my tutorial on how to make oat flour if you don’t have some ready-made in your pantry. Otherwise, swap for the same amount of all-purpose flour.
- Baking Powder and Baking Soda – To make the pancakes a bit fluffy.
- Cinnamon – for classic carrot cake flavors.
- Coconut Sugar or Brown Sugar – Any unrefined sugar works.
- Nutmeg – it’s optional but contributes to the carrot cake flavors.
- Unsweetened Almond Milk or any milk you like.
- Avocado Oil, olive oil, or melted coconut oil.
- Vanilla Extract – for flavor.
- Dried Raisins – Essential for the carrot cake style and taste.
- Chopped Nuts – You can use any type of crushed or chopped nuts like pecans, walnuts, peanuts, or almonds.
How To Make Vegan Carrot Cake Pancakes
First, prepare all the ingredients you need for the recipe. There are quite a few so it’s better to be prepared so you can whip up the carrot cake pancake batter fast.
- First, peel and trim carrots and shred the carrots.
- Slightly pack the shredded carrots in a measuring cup to measure the exact amount required by the recipe.
- First, in a large bowl combine the wet ingredients: almond milk, lemon juice, vanilla extract, and oil. Set it aside.
- In another bowl, whisk the dry ingredients together: flour, oat flour, spices, baking powder, baking soda, and coconut sugar.
- Then, stir the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients until a batter forms.
- Finally, stir dried raisins, chopped walnuts, or chopped pecans, and grated carrots until evenly incorporated.
- Warm a pancake griddle or non-stick pan over medium heat.
- Slightly rub the surface of the pan with a piece of absorbent paper dipped in vegan melted butter or coconut oil, or use cooking spray.
- Add 3 tablespoons of pancake batter to the pan and cook until bubbles form and the sides are getting dryer and set.
- Flip the pancake to the other side and cook for 1 more minute or until golden brown.
- Repeat these steps using the remaining batter.
- Place the cooked pancakes on a wire rack and add a piece of foil on top to keep them warm.
Storage
Store the leftover pancakes in the fridge, in an airtight box for up to 3 days. Rewarm the pancakes in a hot non-stick pan or on a pancake griddle or bread toaster.
You can freeze these healthy carrot cake pancakes in an airtight box, placing pieces of parchment paper between each pancake to prevent them from sticking to each other.
Thaw the day before in the fridge.
Serving
These Carrot Cake pancakes taste even more delicious with some toppings, including:
- Powdered Sugar
- Maple Syrup
- A pinch of Cinnamon
- Chopped, Toasted Pecans – dry roast 1/4 cup extra chopped nuts.
- A Dollop of Coconut Yogurt
- Cream Cheese Frosting – what’s better than turning these carrot cake pancakes into a dessert by making carrot cake pancakes with cream cheese frosting! The best, healthy way to do so, is to use my coconut frosting recipe, it’s dairy-free, much healthier, and gut-friendly than regular vegan cream cheese, and coconut matches carrot cake flavor so well.
Allergy Swaps
If you have some food allergies, I’ve listed below some food swaps you can apply to this healthy pancake recipe to make it yours.
- Gluten-Free – replace all-purpose flour with a blend of all-purpose gluten-free flour containing gum like Bob Red Mill’s 1:1 gluten-free flour. Replace oat flour with buckwheat flour, chickpea flour, or more gluten-free flour.
- Nut-Free – swap the chopped nuts for more dried raisins, cranberries, or shredded coconut.
- Oil-Free – swap the oil for unsweetened applesauce. This makes the pancakes dense and packed.
More Pancake Recipes
If you love baking pancakes for breakfast, especially healthy pancake recipes, then I have a collection of recipes for you to try below.
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Vegan Carrot Cake Pancakes
Ingredients
Dry Ingredients
- ¾ cup Oat Flour - see note to make your own from rolled oats
- 1 ¼ cup All-Purpose Flour - or all-purpose gluten-free flour
- 1 tablespoon Baking Powder
- ¼ teaspoon Baking Soda
- 1 teaspoon Cinnamon
- 3-4 tablespoons Coconut Sugar - or sugar
- ¼ teaspoon Nutmeg
- ¼ teaspoon Salt
Wet Ingredients
- 1 ½ cup Almond Milk - not cold, at room temperature
- 1 teaspoon Lemon Juice
- 2 tablespoons Avocado Oil - or melted coconut oil
- 2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract
Add-ons
- 1 cup Shredded Carrot
- ¼ cup Chopped Pecans - or walnuts
- 2 tablespoons Dried Raisins - or shredded coconut
Instructions
- In a bowl, whisk almond milk, lemon juice, avocado oil, vanilla extract. Set aside.
- In another large bowl, whisk oat flour, flour of choice, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, coconut sugar, baking powder, and baking soda.
- Pour the liquid ingredients onto the dry ingredients and stir with a spatula until it forms a thick pancake batter with no lumps.
- Stir in shredded carrots, chopped nuts, and raisins.
- Heat a pancake griddle pan over medium-high heat. When hot, reduce to low heat and scoop 3 tablespoons of batter per pancake.
- Cook for 2 minutes on one side, then flip and cook for 1-2 minutes on the other side.
- Repeat until no more batter is left, you should form about 14 pancakes.
- Serve with fruits of your choice, maple syrup, or peanut butter.
This was delicious. I added shredded carrots, craisins, coconut and pecans. Similar to the other reviewer, I subbed applesauce for the oil and monk sweetener for the coconut sugar. I used 1/4measuring cup for each pancake.
This recipe is delicious. I did substitute apple sauce for the oil and Golden Monk fruit sugar for the coconut sugar. I chopped dried cherries for the raisins. I’m looking forward to following you.