"Carrot Cake" Bread

Today's recipe we gobbled up so fast that it escaped my mind to photograph it.

Hence, no photo today-- I know you're devastated:).

Anywho.

I watched an episode of "Barefoot Contessa" recently that had me swooning and salivating over what my eyes beheld: a two-layer tiered carrot cake. A tried and true one at that, trimmed with all the predictable flavors and ingredients- including that thick cream cheese frosting. Sluuurrrp! Yum.

It got me thinking how carrot cake might be a superb way of getting some more veggies into my toddler.... if we could tweek it to be slightly healthier.

SO, the next day, we made carrot cake bread. It included freshly cut- up pineapple, golden raisins, whole wheat flour, applesauce, and of course, lots of the shredded orange stuff.

Since I baked it in a nice, traditional 5 x9 loaf pan, I've deemed it as bread and not its counterpart. But call it what you wish.

In spite of using applesauce in place of oil, whole wheat flour instead of white, it still delighted me with it's extremely moist and dense texture; really, really tasty in fact, and we snarfed the entire loaf within 24 hours-- among the 3.5 of us (hopefully I can say, the FOUR of us REAL SOON). Ahem..

Changing subjects slightly, it makes me shudder a wee bit when I hear the phrase "guilt free" associated with anything I eat because personally, I think we all deserve to eat anything we want in moderation, BUT for all intensive purposes, this cake-like bread is truly, "GUILT FREE". There, I said it.

You'll see why it's essentially guilt free once you review the recipe- lots of good-for-you things in there. I suppose the glaze nullifies that just a bit, but as fiber-loaded and healthy as it is, well, the glaze seems perfectly justifiable.

CIAO!

"Carrot Cake" Healthy Bread

1/2 cup applesauce

3/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 cups shredded carrot

1 cup fresh pineapple, finely cut into small dices

1 cup golden raisins

1/2 tsp vanilla flavoring

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

Mix together the applesauce, sugar, and eggs... beat well. Stir in vanilla.

In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.

Add slowly to the wet mixture and combine until just incorporated. Stir in raisins, carrots, and pineapple by hand. Do not over mix.

Preheat oven to 350. Pour into a greased 5 x7 loaf pan and bake for about 35-55 minutes (depending on your oven) until just barely done in the middle.

Let cool and (optional), frost with any favorite light glaze.