Carrot cakes and allergen friendly baking

In a perfect world we would all be eating carrot cake for breakfast every single day. It would be any size you would like it to be, with an extra dash of cream cheese frosting. My friend was spot on when she said "carrot cake and cream cheese frosting is simply made for each other".
Even the name of the cake takes away any shame of indulging - carrots, walnuts and raisin - those are all legitimately healthy foods - come on now =) 
Well, in the real world, this cake is a "no, no" for allot of people. This cake normally comes packed with gluten, dairy, sugar and eggs, just to mention a few common allergens.

I decided to make a post that included alternative options in baking. Whether you are allergic to eggs, dairy or just need to stay away from sugar for a while - you might find some handy tips here:

Starting with the flour: if you need your carrot cake to be gluten free, try using a blend of brown rice(2 parts), tapioca(1/3 part) and potato flour(2/3 part). Like for instance the carrot spice cupcakes I made a few months back, they were made using this flour blend.

Another option for flours is using almond flour. My favorite one is not a "gluten free" carrot cake at first glance, it`s gluten free in nature and a phenomenal carrot cake. Not to mention it is also dairy free and sugar free. You can find the recipe for this almond flour based carrot cake on Elana`s pantry.

Replacing butter in cakes can often be done by using grape-seed oil, earth balance butter, applesauce or coconut oil. In place of milk try using nut milks like hemp milk, almond milk or coconut water, if fitting try hazelnut milk (has an incredible taste as oppose to allot of the nut milks).

If you are like me, allergic to eggs - most of the time you can stick to the recipe you have found, but simply replace the eggs with egg-replacer. A homemade version of egg-replacer is mixing flax meal with arrowroot powder and some tablespoons of water. Another option is to use a mushed up banana.
The cake will not be as fluffy so if your concerned about presenting the cake you might wanna consider to make several cakes and stack them on top of each other for that "big-cake" look. If you are making cupcakes out of it, it doesn't really matter how much the dough rises since you cover it with frosting anyways.
For a bunch more ways on how to substitute eggs in baking, read more here. 

For the sweet part of the cake you can find many different substitutes. Some people use regular sugar, others prefer the more natural sweetener like honey, dates or stevia. Bananas, fruit juice, raisins, maple syrup and sucanat are other good options for sweetening your baked goods with.

Agave nectar started out as a life saver for many people, but has as of late gotten a bad reputation on it for being mostly chemically refined fructose (more then 70% as oppose to high fructose corn syrups 55%). Read more about agave nectar here and decide for yourself if you wanna use it.

A sweetener I just learned about, trehalose is suppose to be a very healthy alternative to table sugar! It`s said to be the sweetener that everyone would use, if they only knew. I personally have yet to try it in my baking, but I am very optimistic after having read up on it. Can be purchased online here.

I ended up baking one batch of Elana`s almond flour cake with eggs, and one without. The one with egg got the real deal cream cheese frosting, the no-egg cake got a coconut cream frosting that you can find the recipe on here.
Personally I found the "special" one, the allergen friendly one to be really good! A little different because of the frosting but definitely something I see myself getting used to and maybe even crave. So this gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free and sugar-free carrot cake turned out amazingly yummi - no need to be without now =)
And as far as the frosting goes - now we know where to go for white frosting alternative for our cupcakes and carrot cake.

-Kathrine-