Vegan Carrot Cake Bars
These vegan carrot cake bars packed with spice and sweetness! They’re completely paleo, gluten free, and made with natural sweetener for a decadent spring dessert!
Back by popular demand, I revamped my original vegan carrot cake bars to be even better than the last! Made with sweet potato, these healthy carrot cake bars are moist, sweet, and full of spicy flavor.
They’re even dairy free, thanks to the coconut butter frosting!
Okay, so the last time that I made these paleo carrot cake bars was last spring, and they weren’t vegan at the time either. But, I’ve since refined the recipe to be completely vegan, and they even taste better, which was hard to do because the general consensus was that they were amazing!
I’m a huge fan of carrot cake in general. I absolutely love the flavor combination of all of the spices and the natural sweetness that comes out from the carrots.
To be honest, you can’t even tell that these vegan carrot cake bars are also refined sugar free. I really like to highlight the natural sweetness of the produce, and in this case, it happens to be both carrots and sweet potatoes! I think that’s how I can get away with not adding a whole lot of sweetness to these bars.
Sweet potatoes just speak for themselves 😉 Am I right, or am I right?
Now, you’re probably wondering what goes into these healthy carrot cake bars and how did I get them to be both paleo and vegan, gluten free and refined sugar free, oh, and dairy free, all while tasting good?
Glad you asked 🙂
Vegan Carrot Cake Bar Ingredients:
Shredded Carrots: well, that’s a given! I actually pureed the carrots with the sweet potato to get this texture. You can buy pre-shredded carrots though to make the recipe even easier. It will still taste amazing!
Sweet Potato: the second star of the show! I think sweet potato is so crucial for this recipe because it really blends well with all of the spices and has a really sweet natural flavor to it. I used a regular orange yam, a pretty large one, and roasted it for about 60 minutes at 375F in foil. This allows all of the juices in the sweet potato to caramelize, bringing out that nice sweet flavor.
Ground Chia/Flax Seed: this goes in place of the egg, since we need something to help bind all of the ingredients together! It’s a pretty moist recipe, so definitely don’t skip this part! Plus you get some nice added nutrients to your paleo carrot cake bars that you might not normally get otherwise 🙂
Coconut Oil: you could probably also use a nut or seed butter, but I like to keep a lot of my paleo recipes nut free for my allergy friends! Plus, the coconut oil actually doesn’t contain much moisture, so it’s good at absorbing the rest of the moisture from the sweet potato and carrots!
Coconut Flour: don’t skimp on this guy! The coconut flour is really good here because it absorbs all of the moisture from the sweet potato and carrots. Basically acts like a vacuum so that these vegan carrot cake bars don’t just fall apart in your hands…that wouldn’t be pretty! Still delicious, but not pretty haha!
Maple Syrup: only a dash here for a little added sweetness! If you don’t like your desserts too sweet though, this healthy carrot cake will still taste amazing without the maple syrup! So go ahead and skip if you feel like 🙂 I, for one, love my maple syrup (I should have been Canadian haha!), so I’ll be adding it always 😉
Spices: well you can’t have carrot cake without all of the spices! We just use a combination of Allspice and cinnamon here, so it’s super simple but still tastes amazing 🙂
Coconut Butter: this serves as the frosting to these healthy carrot cake bars! Seriously, just one ingredient! I love coconut because it has a really nice natural flavor, and it actually complements all of the flavors from the sweet potato, carrots, and spices. If you have a go-to dairy free (or regular dairy) frosting that you just love, by all means, go for it! I’ll be working on one myself, so stay tuned for that!
Vegan Carrot Cake Bar Preparation:
It’s all in the food processor. Seriously, my food processor is my best friend! But you do need to have a few ingredients prepped to go before blending.
Mainly, the sweet potato and the coconut butter. For the sweet potato, as I mentioned in the ingredients section, make sure that you bake and cool your sweet potato ahead of time. I always bake a bunch of sweet potatoes at the beginning of the week so that I can have them throughout, or use them for a recipe like for these vegan carrot cake bars!
Bake your sweet potato at 375F for about an hour in foil, and then let cool before handling- nobody likes touching a hot potato!
For the coconut butter, just make sure that you melt it well enough before spreading it. This allows all of the oils to mix with the coconut “meat” (it’s not actually meat, but it’s called that when you’re talking about the coconut filling).
I always place my coconut butter just by the oven so that it gets some heat from the oven warming up, but I can save time so that I can make the batter without worrying about later melting the coconut butter! By the time the vegan carrot cake bars are ready to come out of the oven, your coconut butter should be melted!
These healthy carrot cake bars are seriously some of my favorites. They’re a fabulous dessert to bring to any Easter celebration or springtime party. Plus, they make a great breakfast, thanks to the nutrients from the chia seeds, healthy carbohydrates from the sweet potatoes, and nutrients from the carrots!
I love to add these paleo carrot cake bars to a yogurt bowl or even crumbled on top of a bowl of nice cream (the banana is just so good!).
I hope you love these paleo carrot cake bars as much as I do! Would love to hear what you think about them in the comments below 🙂 Enjoy!
Want to save this recipe for later? Add it to your favorite recipe board on Pinterest!
Vegan Carrot Cake Bars {Paleo, GF}
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 35 minutes
- Total Time: 45 minutes
- Yield: 9 1x
- Category: Dessert
Description
These vegan carrot cake bars packed with spice and sweetness! They’re completely paleo, gluten free, and made with natural sweetener for a decadent spring dessert!
Ingredients
- 1 large sweet potato (baked then cooled, skin removed)
- 1 cup shredded carrots (steamed)
- 1/2 cup coconut flour
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/4 cup maple syrup
- 1 tsp all spice
- 2 tbsp ground flax or chia seed
- 1/4 cup coconut oil (melted)
- 1 pinch sea salt
Frosting
- 3/4 cup coconut butter (melted)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 and grease a 9×9 baking pan.
- In a food processor, puree sweet potato, carrots, coconut oil, and maple syrup together.
- Fold in flours, flax/chia, cinnamon, all spice, and sea salt.
- Pour batter into the baking pan and bake for about 35 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.
- Remove from oven and let cool for 10 minutes. You can even place in the freezer to cool down even more before layering with melted coconut butter.
- Spread coconut butter on top of bars and sprinkle with cinnamon if desired!
How large of a sweet potato did you use?
I would suggest using a medium sweet potato!
Mine came out tasting more like sweet potato pie than carrot cake, but they were tasty! Also, I don’t have coconut butter, so I had to improvise the frosting. I did a mix of Earth’s Balance vegan butter, fine unsweetened coconut flakes, applesauce, apple cider vinegar, lemon, almond milk, vanilla extract, and dates I believe. Lastly, I toasted some coconut flakes and walnuts to top it all off.
Thanks for the recipe!
That frosting sounds amazing!! Thank you for the rating!!