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These Carrot Cake Bars have all the classic flavors of your favorite carrot cake recipe yet are made with healthy, wholesome ingredients. Drizzle with our homemade cream cheese frosting for a sweet final touch, then enjoy for breakfast or dessert all Spring long.
Whenever Spring and the Easter holiday rolls around, we can’t help but indulge in our fair share of carrot cake recipes. From these gluten-free and vegan carrot cake bars, these raw carrot cake bites, these carrot cake cookie sandwiches, and these fluffy vegan carrot cake pancakes, we’ve got your carrot cake lovers covered!
Or, check out our full list of Vegan Desserts to Try This Spring and our top 22 Must Try Vegan Holiday Recipes. There’s guaranteed to be something for your holiday tables.
Key Ingredients You’ll Need
- Oats – For the best consistency and texture, we recommend using old-fashioned rolled oats. If you are gluten-free, make sure to use rolled oats with a gluten-free certification on the bag. This will ensure cross contamination did not occur.
- Oat flour – Oat flour is made by grinding oats into a powder. We find that we can never get it as fine at home as opposed to buying it at the store, so we prefer to use this brand.
- Walnuts – We don’t know about you, but we love chopped walnuts in our traditional carrot cake so naturally, we added some to these healthy bars! Feel free to omit the walnuts if you’re not a fan, or swap them for another nut, such as chopped pecans.
- Chia egg – This egg substitute is made by combining 1 tablespoon of chia seeds with 3 tablespoons of water until gelatinous. If you’ve ever made a flax egg, the process is very similar!
- Medjool dates – In the spirit of keeping these bars as healthy as possible, we chose to sweeten them with pitted and packed Medjool dates. They make the perfect sweet, chewy carrot cake bars and add a similar flavor to brown sugar.
- Applesauce – Another source of natural sweetness in this healthier version. For best results, use an unsweetened applesauce made without any added sugars.
- Carrots – These wouldn’t be a carrot cake bars recipe without fresh carrots! In addition to distinguishing these bars from any other dessert bar, the carrots add moisture and the classic flavor we know and love.
Equipment Needed
- 8×6″ baking dish
- Parchment paper
- Mixing bowls
- Food processor
- Spatula or wet spoon
- Whisk
- Cutting board and sharp knife
How to Make Carrot Cake Bars
- Prepare the chia egg. In a small bowl or cup, mix the chia seeds and water together. Set aside to thicken, about 15 minutes.
- Mix the dry ingredients. In a separate, large mixing bowl, mix together the oats, peanut flour, walnuts, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
- Make the date puree. Into a large cup food processor, add the dates, applesauce, vanilla extract, and apple cider vinegar. Process until well combined.
- Add in remaining ingredients. Into the same food processor bowl, add the oat and flour mixture as well as the chia egg. Process again until uniform.
- Mix in the shredded carrots and raisins. Transfer the moist carrot cake dough back into the original bowl the dry ingredients were mixed in. Add the shredded carrots and raisins and mix everything together until a cookie dough-like consistency forms. We find this easiest to do with wet, clean hands.
- Press into baking pan. Once well combined, press the carrot cake bar mixture into the prepared baking dish.
- Bake. Place the carrot cake bars in the preheated oven and bake for 22-24 minutes. Remove and cool the carrot cake bars completely at room temperature.
- Prepare the simple cream cheese frosting. Sift the powdered sugar into a medium-sized bowl, then add in the vegan cream cheese, lemon juice, and unsweetened almond milk.
- Drizzle the bars. Once the carrot bars have cooled, cut them into small or large bars, then drizzle the top of the bars with cream cheese frosting, as desired. This is easiest to do using a spoon or a piping bag.
- Serve. Enjoy this carrot dessert at room temperature or chilled.
Serving Suggestions
These delicious carrot cake bars make for the perfect breakfast, on-the-go snack, or even a healthy dessert! Enjoy with a tall glass of homemade almond milk and a side of your favorite fresh fruit, or as desired.
If you enjoy these carrot cake bars, you may love these other spring-inspired treats: Golden Milk Cinnamon Rolls, Gluten-Free Lemon Poppyseed Breakfast Cookies, or these Fluffy Vegan Carrot Cake Pancakes.
Storage Instructions
When stored in an airtight container, these easy carrot cake bars will keep for up to 1 week in the refrigerator. The bars can also be frozen.
If freezing, do so without the cream cheese frosting. Instead, follow the recipe through step 7 and cool the bars completely. Once room temperature, tightly wrap the bars in plastic wrap or another reusable wrap and place into a freezer bag. This will prevent freezer burn and preserve the amazing flavor. When frozen, these bars will keep for up to 3 months.
Thaw frozen carrot cake bars in the refrigerator or at room temperature until softened, then top with cream cheese mixture before eating.
More Homemade Dessert Bars You May Enjoy:
- Creamy Lemon Rosemary Bars – The best vegan lemon bars filled with fresh lemon juice and lemon zest.
- Chocolate Chip Protein Cookie Bars – These dessert bars are easy, vegan, and oil-free.
- Easy Peanut Butter Squares – A quick and delicious dessert recipe that’s ready in just 30 minutes!
- Vegan Cheesecake Brownies – Decadent brownies with a layer of cheesecake swirled in. It’s as delicious as it sounds.
- Classic Vegan Brownies – One of our most popular recipes for a reason! No one can resist these fudgy bars.
If you make this recipe, let us know what you think in the comments below! + If you post any photos on Instagram, make sure you tag us @sweetsimplevegan and @consciouschris so that we don’t miss it, we love seeing your photos!
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Healthy Vegan Carrot Cake Bars Recipe
- Total Time: 39 minutes
- Yield: 10 bars
Description
These Carrot Cake Bars have all the classic flavors of your favorite carrot cake recipe, yet are made with healthy, wholesome ingredients. Drizzle with our homemade cream cheese frosting for a sweet final touch, then enjoy for breakfast or dessert all Spring long.
Ingredients
Dry
- 2 cups gluten-free rolled oats
- ¼ cup oat flour
- ¼ cup walnuts, chopped
- 1½ teaspoons baking powder
- 1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon pink Himalayan salt
Wet
- 1 chia “egg” (1 tbsp chia seeds + 3 tbsp water)
- 1/2 cup organic Medjool dates, pitted and packed
- ¼ cup organic unsweetened applesauce
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
- ¾ cup grated carrots
- 2 tablespoon raisins
Cream Cheese Frosting (optional but recommended)
- 1/2 cup organic powdered sugar
- 2 tablespoons vegan cream cheese (we used Kite Hill)
- 1/2 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
- 1/2 tablespoon unsweetened almond milk (+ more as needed to thin)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven 350°F and line a small 8×6″ baking dish with parchment paper.
- In a small cup or bowl, prepare the chia egg. Mix together the chia seeds and water and set aside to thicken, about 15 minutes.
- In a large bowl, mix together all of the dry ingredients until uniform and set aside.
- In a food processor, add the dates, applesauce, vanilla extract and apple cider vinegar. Process until everything is well combined. Add the dry ingredients and the chia egg and process it until uniform. (see notes)
- Add the dough back into the large bowl that the dry ingredients were in and mix in the shredded carrots. Using wet hands, mix everything together until uniform. It will become a cookie dough-like consistency.
- Transfer the dough to the lined baking dish and press it in tightly with a spatula or wet spoon, evening out the top as much as possible.
- Place it in the oven and bake for 22-24 minutes. Remove and cool completely.
- In the meantime, prepare the frosting. Sift the powdered sugar into a medium-sized bowl and add in the remaining ingredients. Whisk everything together until smooth and add more almond milk as needed to reach your desired consistency. Set aside.
- Once the bars have cooled, transfer them to a cutting board and cut it into your desired size of bars. We cut ours into 10 small bars. Drizzle it with the cream cheese frosting as desired.
- Transfer it to an airtight container and store in the refrigerator for 5-7 days.
Notes
- If you would like the bar to be more chunky (as pictured), refrain from adding the dry mix into the food processor. Instead, add it to the large bowl and proceed with the remaining steps.
- We used a 6 cup Pyrex dish for baking.
- The nutrition facts for this recipe take into consideration all of the frosting.
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 24 minutes
If you love this recipe, you will also love our Carrot Cake Cookie Sandwiches! You can click on the image below to check it out 🙂
Nutrition facts label provided by Nutri Fox.
Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post. However, this page may contain affiliate links, thank you for supporting Sweet Simple Vegan!
The carrot cake bars are wonderful!! I skipped the baking soda and left out raisins ( due to hubby preference) and didn’t bother with the cream cheese drizzle. Wonderful!!
These look fantastic. Question.. is there any reason I can’t use my organic pb2 I use in some of my smoothies for this recipe instead of having to buy peanut butter flour? Looks like the same thing?
Hello, could i use almond flour instead of peanut flour? Or reduce peanuts in flour in a blender?
Hi Julie! You can try our reducing the peanuts in the blender if you would like. Peanut flour is made by grinding the roasted nuts into a thick paste and then pressing out most or all of the oil, so when you do that it will be of a higher fat content and may not be identical to the exact recipe so I cannot guarantee results, but I would try it out! Also, I think you can also swap in almond flour 🙂
Homemade snacks are the best kind! I definitely need to improve my snack game and start creating more homemade snacks rather than buying the store-bought bars, chips bags, and all those other packaged grazing foods. I just love trying new protein bars! Anyhow, these vegan carrot cake granola bars look even better than any of those conventional oatmeal or granola bars I’ve seen. Never would have thought of using peanut flour–I can only imagine how amazing of a flavor that would add to the bars!
We hope you can try these out, Cassie! 🙂