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Bring the taste of carrot cake to your breakfast by making these easy vegan carrot cake pancakes. They’e made with staple ingredients that you probably already have in your pantry plus shredded carrots, coconut and walnuts. It’s pretty much like having healthy cake for breakfast – can’t beat that!
This carrot cake pancake recipe is moist and soft just like cake, but it’s made with no butter and no refined sugar. I use plant-based milk, maple syrup and grapeseed oil to make the batter. Now you can have your favorite dessert for breakfast!
How to make carrot cake pancakes
Start by shredded or grating carrots. There are many ways to do this using a food processor, a blender, microplane or cheese box grater. I prefer the cheese box grater because the consistency is not too crunchy/raw or too soft/wet. It’s the perfect texture, especially considering we’re not cooking the carrots for a long time.
You’ll need about ½ a cup of shredded carrots. If you end up grating more, throw it on top of the carrot pancakes for serving to bring out that extra carrot flavor, throw it in soups, in a smoothie or even in one-pot rice dishes.
Once you grate the carrots, it’s time to put the batter together.
- Start by measuring out the dry ingredients: whole wheat white flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt.
- Whisk those together until fully combined. You want to make sure you don’t see any globs of cinnamon in there.
- Measure out the wet ingredients in another bowl: milk, maple syrup, oil and vanilla extract.
- Whisk those together until combined as much as possible. It won’t be fully homogenous and that’s totally fine.
- Combine the wet and dry ingredients together. Then throw in the add-ins which include the grated carrots, chopped walnuts and shredded coconut.
- Now the batter is ready for you to cook the carrot cake pancakes on a skillet.
Tips for making carrot cake pancakes
- Use fresh carrots for the best taste. Since baby carrots and pre-cut carrots are treated with chlorine to preserve them, the taste is not as prominent when shredded as compared to whole carrots. I also found that the pre-shredded store-bought carrots are too long and thick to work well in this batter. Be sure to chop them finely if you want to use them.
- Shred the carrots; don’t grate the carrots. If you use a microplane to grate the carrots, they end up releasing too much moisture which affects the consistency of the batter and will need to be patted dry before use. It’s best to shred them finely.
- Add more spices to your liking. I use ½ teaspoon cinnamon, but you can easily add another ½ teaspoon of a mix of warm spices that are signature to traditional carrot cake, including nutmeg, ginger, allspice and ground cloves.
- Make a whipped cream cheese topping. I keep it simple by topping these carrot cake pancakes with coconut yogurt plus more of the add-ins on top. However, you can make it more decadent by whisking together cream cheese, maple syrup and milk until soft with no lumps.
More pancake recipes:
- High Protein Pancakes
- Sweet Potato Pancakes
- Oat Flour Pancakes
- Healthy Pumpkin Pancakes
- Lemon Ricotta Pancakes
- Flourless Strawberry Pancakes
- Banana Pancake Dippers
These carrot cake pancakes make for a decadent delicious weekend breakfast when you want something a little more special. They are also great for Easter brunch with their fresh bright flavor. If you’re a carrot cake fan, you don’t want to miss these vegan carrot cake pancakes!
If you’ve tried this healthy-ish feel good Carrot Cake Pancakes recipe or any other recipe on FeelGoodFoodie, then don’t forget to rate the recipe and leave me a comment below! I would love to hear about your experience making it. And if you snapped some shots of it, share it with me on Instagram so I can repost on my stories!
Carrot Cake Pancakes
Video
Ingredients
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder aluminium-free
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 pinch sea salt
- 1 cup oat milk other other plant-based milk
- 2 tablespoons maple syrup
- 3 tablespoons grapeseed oil
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup shredded carrots lightly packed
- 2 tablespoons walnuts
- 1 tablespoon shredded coconut
- Cooking spray
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking, cinnamon, and salt; set aside
- In a large bowl, combine the oat milk, maple syrup, oil and vanilla extract. Stir in the shredded carrots, walnuts and shredded coconut.
- Heat a nonstick griddle over medium-low heat. Spray with coconut oil cooking spray or leave the pan dry.
- Pour ⅓ cup of the batter into the hot griddle. Cook for 3-4 minutes, until the edges firm up and you can slide spatula under the pancake. Flip the pancake and cook for another 1-2 minutes until the pancake is cooked through. Repeat for the remaining batter. Recipe yields about 8 pancakes.
- Serve immediately with coconut yogurt, walnuts and maple syrup, if desired.
Nutrition
Nutrition information provided is an estimate. It will vary based on cooking method and specific ingredients used.
It calls for 1 Tablespoon of baking powder. They turned out inedible. Is it supposed to be 1 tsp? With 1 Tablespoon of baking powder they taste bitter. I’m sure they would be great without that much baking powder. Kids had to eat cereal instead.
Oh no! I am sorry to hear that. Did you use aluminum-free baking powder? If not, that will give the pancakes a bitter taste. The 1 tablespoon is not a typo, but it for sure needs to be made with aluminum-free baking powder.
YUM! Love these! I made a lot of mods to make them even healthier, though. I used oat flour, skipped the oil completely, added 1 TB chia seeds + 1 TB ground flax, and approx 1 TB of fresh ginger. DELISH!!!
That does sound yummy; thank you for sharing!
These has potential to be good, but the baking powder it called for was way too much. They were bitter and “fizzy”. Wondering it it was supposed to be 1 teaspoon and not tablespoon? I should have gone with my gut that ot was too much but I didn’t and they were inedible. I’m surprised no one else has brought this up, but beware. I’ll definitely give this another go and just seriously decrease the baking powder.
Hmm, that really shouldn’t have been the case, but let me know how it goes if you decrease the baking powder!
Made these for Easter morning. My husband is vegan so they were a real treat for him and even my kids loved them. Really moist and natural tasting. Loved the addition of coconut and walnuts. Thanks for the recipe!
I’m so glad you all enjoyed it! You’re so welcome! Happy Easter!
Amazing Recipe! I’ve replaced the Oat milk for Coconut milk and it worked great!!! and I shredded the carrots (we like it better) I try to increase the recipe by 1/2 to make 12 pancakes but I only ended up with 10; both, the coconut milk and the shredded carrots may have been too thick, nevertheless, they came out delicious and thick which made them very filling. One thing I added extra was a teaspoon of ACV.
I’m so glad to hear it! Yay!!
Is it possible to replace the flour with oats (blended)?
I haven’t tried that yet with this recipe, but I think it will work. Let me know if you give that a try!
Is it 153 calories for just one pancake or 153 calories for all 8 pancakes.
That’s for just one pancake
I made this for my friend and she loved it, I tried adding chopped dates and sprinkles of cardamom on top instead of the coconut, will be making it again!
So glad to hear it! Thank you!!
Great recipe for a lazy Sunday! Best part was that my kids loved it! Great way for them to eat some veggies!
So glad to hear the kids enjoyed it!! Thank you!
Hi,
I’ve just made them.
They taste really good but is it normal that the inside remain soft and wet?
Thank you
Bye Federica
No, the inside shouldn’t be soft still. Maybe you didn’t cook it at the right temperature or long enough.