Nutmeg and Cinnamon Carrot Bread

This week, I considered renaming “Through the Spice Rack” to “Peach, Tomato, Carrot”, but the latter isn’t as catchy. Or how about “Farm Share Recipes”? I’m elbow deep in fruits and vegetables, and have several new recipes in the queue to try out. One was a total disaster, and entirely my fault, when I substituted way too many healthy ingredients – so I’ll remake that one with the original recipe before sharing.

I modified this Carrot Bread recipe only slightly, but will still share the entire recipe with my changes. The blog post title simply recognizes the spices already in the bread/recipe.

http://www.food.com/recipe/whole-wheat-zucchini-or-carrot-bread-325250

Blend 1/4 cup oil with 1/4 cup applesauce; add ¼ cup honey, ¼ cup brown sugar (mix in); add 2 eggs, 1 tsp. vanilla, ½ tsp. baking powder, ½ tsp. baking soda, ½ tsp. salt, 1 ½ tsp. cinnamon, and ½ tsp. nutmeg. Once everything is blended, stir in 1 ½ cups shredded carrots or 1 ½ cups shredded zucchini. Stir in 1 ½ cups whole wheat flour. Add ½ cup nuts (optional) and ½ cup raisins (optional). Bake in 9” loaf pan at 350 for 45 – 60 minutes.

Taking photos of some recipes is a challenge. For example, I made indian pudding for the first time, but it’s not attractive to look at and I didn’t want to decorate it nicely with ice cream and whipped cream just for the photo. Don’t get me wrong, it tastes great with those additions, but we’ve stopped stocking those items at home to reduce the temptation to finish them off rather quickly. So no photo of the plain pudding (brown), and the early steps of the carrot bread were equally unglamorous.

I did not reduce the amount of sugar/honey called for in the original recipe. I found this bread to be good but very healthy. I didn’t want to add frosting made out of confectioner’s sugar- that was the whole point of making a bread instead of a cake or muffin, but I did want a bit of interesting flavor and/or moisture to round out this bread. I enjoyed a slice with flavored fat free yogurt instead of frosting! Next time I would add either chocolate chips, pineapple, or a touch more sugar to the recipe.

Due to less than stellar photo quality for the carrot bread, here is a bonus on our "save the watermelon" campaign. As you can see, the neighborhood squirrels or rabbits helped themselves to the young watermelons (completely decimated melon not shown). A plastic colander with a guard statue may save the last one for us to enjoy in a few weeks! Stay tuned...