Knowledge Base › Fran Costigan - Grateful, Sweet, and Totally Vegan Holiday Desserts

I've made the carrot cake from your cookbook. It was too wet and didn't come out right. What am I missing? What am I doing wrong?

Grateful, Sweet, and Totally Vegan Holiday Desserts

Fran Costigan - Grateful, Sweet, and Totally Vegan Holiday Desserts

Recorded

This event was on November 4, 2025

Join Chef Fran Costigan, Rouxbe Director of Vegan Pastry for a discussion of how to make holiday desserts delicious and easy. Fran will offer suggestions for Thanksgiving desserts that wow without any dairy, eggs or refined white sugar or stress.

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Question

Elisavet Sotiriadou

I've made the carrot cake from your cookbook. It was too wet and didn't come out right. What am I missing? What am I doing wrong?

Answer

Great, good desserts naturally, and I have never had a problem with that cake and, um, people make it all the time. So I don't know what you're doing wrong. It has to do with measuring carefully. Measuring carefully. Now the recipes, the recipe in that particular book, my first cookbook doesn't have weights, uh, the recipes in my chocolate book does. So if you are using all of the ingredients and not making substitutions and if you're using the proper amount of carrot, um, then it should work. If it's too wet, maybe you're not baking it long enough and maybe your oven is off. That's all I can think of. If you wanna send a note to me at Fran@Rouxbe.com, we can describe, we can work on it.

Fran Costigan

Director of Vegan Pastry

FranCostigan.com

Fran Costigan is internationally renowned as the authority on vegan desserts. Trained at the New York Restaurant School and Natural Gourmet Institute, Fran was a chef in both traditional and vegan pastry kitchens before moving into teaching over 20 years ago. A lifelong chocoholic and long time vegan, Fran’s latest book, Vegan Chocolate: Unapologetically Luscious and Decadent Dairy Free Desserts, (Running Press 2013) is for all who madly, deeply love chocolate desserts, whether or not dietary considerations are an issue. Her previous cookbook, More Great Good Dairy-Free Desserts Naturally (Book Publishing Company 2006) is the basis of the Costigan Vegan Baking Boot Camp Intensive®. For more information, www.francostigan.com.