These Gluten-Free Vegan Carrot Muffins are moist and fluffy, fragrant and fruity and perfect for a healthy breakfast!
What better way to start the day than with a sweet, fruity muffin? And how much better if the muffin happens to be healthy and low in sugar? Well, these Gluten-Free Vegan Carrot Muffins have got you covered!
These muffins were inspired by my favourite carrot cake recipe: it's easy, versatile and requires just one bowl! Plus, it happens to be undetectably vegan, gluten-free and refined sugar free.
These muffins differ slightly as I've halved the amount of maple syrup and added plenty of raisins instead. You could even omit the maple syrup entirely if you prefer, and if raisins aren't your thing, they can be substituted with chopped dates, dried figs, dried mango, dried pineapple or dried papaya.
The batter also includes plenty of warming spices, earthy walnuts and sweet desiccated coconut. I also decided to sprinkle over some coconut flakes before baking for extra fragrant, nutty sweetness.
These muffins make a great dessert, healthy snack or breakfast. They're filling and energising as they contain a nice amount of protein, fibre and natural sweetness.
Though these muffins do taste best when fresh, they work well for batch cooking and meal prep as they keep well covered in the fridge for up to a few days, and freeze well too. If you have just taken them out of the fridge of freezer, I’d recommend warming them up in an oven toaster if you have one.
For more carrot cake recipes, check out my:
- Carrot Cake Mug Cake
- Carrot Cake Cupcakes
- Tropical Carrot Cake
- Carrot Cake Cookies
- Purple Carrot Cake
If you try out this recipe or anything else from my blog, I’d really love to hear any feedback! Please give it a rating, leave a comment, or tag a photo #rhiansrecipes on Instagram! Thank you.
Helpful tools to make this Gluten-Free Vegan Carrot Muffins:
box grater
glass mixing bowl
measuring jug
muffin/cupcake tin
Gluten-Free Vegan Carrot Muffins
Ingredients
- 60 g (¼ cup) coconut oil (or sub olive or vegetable oil)
- 230 ml (1 cup) unsweetened almond milk (or any other plant-based milk)
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 4 tablespoons maple syrup (or sub any other sweetener)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon ground ginger
- 1 teaspoon mixed spice (or sub a mixture of nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves)
- Pinch salt
- 100 g (3.5 oz) grated carrot (one medium-sized carrot)
- 100 g (⅔ cup) raisins or sultanas
- 30 g (¼ cup) walnuts , roughly chopped
- 2 tablespoons desiccated coconut
- 150 g (1 ¼ cup) ground almonds (almond meal) *
- 150 g (1 ¼ cup) gluten-free flour blend (or sub plain flour if not gluten-free)
- 2 heaped teaspoons baking powder (ensure gluten-free if necessary)
- ¼ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
To decorate:
- Coconut flakes
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit)
- Place the coconut oil in a large bowl and melt over a saucepan of boiling water or in the microwave (skip this step if using any other oil)
- Once melted, add the milk to the same bowl along with the lemon juice, maple syrup, vanilla, ginger, mixed spice, salt, grated carrot, raisins, walnuts, desiccated coconut and ground almonds
- Sift in the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda
- Mix well, adding a tiny splash more milk if it's looking too dry
- Transfer the mixture between muffin cases in a muffin tin
- Bake in the oven for 20 minutes until risen and an inserted skewer comes out clean
- Tastes best when fresh, but keeps covered in the fridge for up to a few days
Notes
Disclosure: This posts contains affiliate links to Amazon. If you purchase any of these products, a small percentage will come to me with no extra cost to you! This income will go towards the running of this blog – thank you.
Marissa
Hey Rhian!
I just made these last night, and they needed 30 minutes to bake as opposed to 20 mins and they are still quite moist! Do you have any suggestions or know why they could be turning out like that?
Rhian Williams
Hi Marissa, thank you so much for your feedback. I'm sorry about that - I think it depends slightly on your oven and how much liquid your carrots contain. Did you bake them until an inserted skewer came out clean? What type of gluten-free flour did you use? Thank you again!
Katherine Robertson
Hi! We made this yesterday and found that it seemed to need half of the 3 cups of total flour called for. Am I nuts? Ha ha!
Rhian Williams
Hi - thank you for your feedback! So you used the same amount of the other ingredients but only used half of each of the flours?
Seong Hyun
Hey, love your recipe, just wanted to check one more thing before I give it a try.
So overall the total amount of flour that would be needed is 300g, right ?
Rhian Williams
Thank you! Yes - you'll need to use 150g ground almonds and 150g gluten-free flour, so 300g flour in total!
LaRae
This is the exact type of recipe I’ve been looking for! Question: Is the lemon juice just for flavor? If I don’t have lemon juice, what’s that going to do to me? (We just got a bunch of snow, and I’m not going to the store! Lol)
Rhian Williams
Thank you! The lemon juice was for flavour/for the acidity of the lemon juice to react with the alkali baking soda. You can replace it with 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar!
Sara
I'm baking mine right now and they are uncooked in the center. I've hit 25 min. Doing another 5 ...eek!
Rhian Williams
Hope they turned out ok!!