You’ve heard about zucchini bread and banana bread. But, what about carrot bread? Carrots add flavor, texture, and fiber to this easy carrot bread recipe.
Carrots are affordable and almost always available, making them a perfect vegetable to work into your baking. Make a bulk batch of this carrot cake bread so that you can easily freeze extra loaves for later. Serve them with Sweet Cream Cheese for an extra special touch on a table of Easter Desserts.
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Most folks are familiar with zucchini bread or banana bread as a way to use up excess produce; carrot bread is relatively unknown. Until now.
This Easy Carrot Bread Recipe, redolent with spices and kissed with a powdered sugar glaze, is a perfect afternoon snack or an elegant addition to your breakfast or brunch spread.
Why Make This
It’s delicious. Carrot bread is a lot like carrot cake, making it the ideal sweet treat.
It’s super affordable. Since carrots are almost always affordable and easily available. No need to wait for browned bananas or for zucchini season to roll around. Get baking with carrots!
It makes a bulk batch. This recipe produces four loaves of quick bread, making it easy to eat one and freeze the rest for another time. You can always scale it down on the recipe card if you like, but it’s worth having extra on hand.
Ingredients
Generally speaking all the ingredients in this recipe are grocery staples, making it easy to make whenever you like.
Please note that this recipe makes four loaves of carrot bread. If you would like to make fewer loaves, adjust the servings on the recipe card.
Here’s what you’ll need:
neutral oil – I use avocado as my preferred oil for baking. You can use canola, vegetable, coconut, or light olive oil as well as melted butter.
eggs – If you run out of eggs or need to avoid them for dietary reasons, you can use Flaxseed Meal as an Egg Substitute.
buttermilk – The acid in the buttermilk is what helps the baking powder react. You can buy commercial buttermilk, culture your own buttermilk, or use a buttermilk substitution such as equal parts yogurt and milk or 1 tablespoon white vinegar added to each cup of milk.
vanilla extract – This adds a nice flavor, but in lieu of commercial vanilla, you can also use rum. Homemade vanilla is also easy to make.
sugar – I use granulated sugar but you can also use sucanat, turbinado, or brown sugar in this recipe.
carrots – You’ll need several shredded carrots. You can shred them yourself or buy them pre-shredded.
unbleached, all-purpose flour – This is the type of flour I prefer, you can also use whole wheat pastry flour or bleached, all-purpose flour.
leavenings (baking powder, salt, and baking soda) – These are what give the bread its lift. You cannot omit them.
spices (ground cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves) – This is what makes this carrot bread “spiced” and gives it a rich flavor. You can omit them, but the flavor of the bread will be decidedly different. You can also substitute a tablespoon of pumpkin pie or apple pie spice if that is what you have.
lemon zest – Lemon zest can be from a fresh lemon or dried zest from the spice section. Either works well. If you have a lot of lemons, you can freeze lemon zest to use in baking later. In lieu of lemon zest, you can use orange zest instead.
Step-by-Step Instructions
This is a super simple recipe to prep!
- Combine the dry ingredients in a very large bowl. Remember this makes four loaves, so you’ll need the largest bowl you have.
2. Combine the wet ingredients in a second mixing bowl.
3. Add the wet ingredients to the dry along with the shredded carrots. Fold gently to combine.
4. Line four loaf pans with parchment paper, using binder clips to hold the paper in place. Alternatively, spray the pans with nonstick cooking spray. Spoon the batter into the prepared pans and bake until a tester comes out with a few crumbs attached.
5. Remove the loaves from their pans and allow them to cool completely on a wire rack. Once the loaves are cooled completely, you can wrap them securely in plastic wrap and place the loaves in a ziptop freezer bag in the freezer.
Freezing instructions
This recipe makes enough for four loaves, though you can easily halve or even quarter the recipe. Eat one and wrap the others in plastic wrap and place in freezer bags in the icebox for future good eats.
To freeze: Cool the loaves completely on a wire rack. Once completely cool, wrap each loaf with plastic wrap. Place the wrapped loaves in a large ziptop freezer bag and store in the freezer, up to 3 months.
Alternatively, you can slice the loaves and freeze the slices in serving-size packages.
To serve: remove a loaf or serving-size package and allow it to thaw, in its wrapping, before slicing and serving. Feel free to add the glaze to a thawed loaf if you like.
Optional Glaze
The carrot bread is delicious on its own, but if you’d like to take it up a notch, drizzle the easy powdered sugar glaze over the top. You just need powdered sugar and milk.
To prepare the glaze: In a small mixing bowl combine the powdered sugar and enough milk to create a thin frosting. Using a wooden spoon to mix it will help you prevent lumping icing.
Drizzle the glaze over the cooled breads. Once the glaze has set, you can slice and serve.
FAQs
Carrot bread is a quick bread, meaning that it doesn’t use yeast for leavening, but rather baking soda and/or baking powder. Similar to Carrot Cake, it features shredded carrot to give it flavor and texture.
This particular carrot bread recipe is on the sweet side, making it similar to a cake, but easier to bake.
Carrot bread is delicious served at breakfast or snack time with butter or a Flavored Cream Cheese. It is also good as a dessert, served with coffee.
Recipe Costs
Knowing how much it costs you to prepare a recipe can help you decide if it’s the type of recipe to make regularly or one you might want to save for special occasions. Let’s crunch some numbers and see how this recipe pencils out.
- oil – $0.64
- eggs – $2.00
- buttermilk – $0.80
- vanilla extract – $0.75
- sugar – $1.10
- carrots – $1.00
- flour – $1.60
- baking powder – $0.09
- salt – $0.06
- cinnamon – $0.15
- lemon zest – $0.10
- baking soda – $0.01
- nutmeg – $0.05
- ginger – $0.13
- cloves – $0.10
- optional glaze – $0.40
Shopped at a midrange grocery store at non-sale prices, it costs $8.98 to make a batch of four loaves of carrot bread, or $2.25/loaf.
How to save even more?
Here are some of the strategies you can use to make this recipe more economical:
- Bake it yourself from scratch – Don’t buy mixes. Don’t buy pricey bakery bread. You can make your own better and cheaper at home!
- Stock up on ingredients when they are on sale. When I find regular kitchen staples on sale, I buy a lot. I’m currently using a price book to track prices and that’s saving me money. For this recipe, keeping an eye on the price of flour and sugar can help keep the price down.
- Buying in bulk – It’s rare that I would buy one bag of flour. I usually stock up when there are good baking sales. I also have gotten into the habit of buying cases of flour from Bob’s Red Mill.
Other Sweet Treats You’ll Enjoy
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Easy Carrot Bread Recipe
Equipment
- large mixing bowl
- box grater
- wire whisk
- rubber spatula
- bread pan
- wire rack
Ingredients
- 2 cup neutral oil
- 8 egg beaten
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 5 cup granulated sugar
- 4 cup carrots (shredded)
- 8 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- 1 lemon, zested
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- ½ teaspoon ground cloves
Optional powdered sugar glaze
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1 to 2 tablespoon milk
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°. Spray four 8.5×4.5-inch loaf pans with nonstick cooking spray.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine the oil, eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla. Stir in the sugar until well incorporated. Stir in the carrots.
- In another large mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, lemon zest, baking soda, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves. Whisk to blend.
- Add the flour mixture to the wet mixture and fold to combine.
- Divide the batter into the prepared pans and bake for about 1 hour or until a tested comes out with a few crumbs attached. Cool loaves on a wire rack.
- In a small bowl, place the powdered sugar. Add enough milk to form a thin glaze. Drizzle the glaze over the cooled loaves.
Notes
Nutrition
This post was originally published on April 12, 2012. It has been updated for content and clarity.
Katie
Love this recipe! I didn’t have enough carrots so used some parsnip…delicious. Thanks.
Jessica Fisher
Great substitution!
Janet
I just took the bread out of the oven and could not wait to taste — very yummy! The whole house smells great too. I cut the recipe in half. Thanks for the recipe. I am particularly partial to quick bread recipes that use fruits or veggies for flavoring.
Jessica Fisher
So glad you enjoyed it!
Laurie Livingston
What kind of oil did you use? Canola or Veggie?
Jessica Fisher
I use sunflower for my baking.
Nia
Jessica,
OMG this is the best bread I’ve ever made and eaten! And I used 100% HARD RED WHOLE WHEAT. I can’t stop eating it-and I need to because I’ve got 15 lbs of apriums to finish off. Just wanted to say thanks for sharing this recipe, the result is AMAZING! I didn’t even add the lemon zest, so I know that adding it in would especially send the bread over the top delicious!
Jessica
@Nia, wow! So glad you enjoyed it!
Kathy
Could I substitute jarred baby food carrots for the shredded? I have arthritis and sometimes don’t want to hand shred (I don’t like food processor size shreds for carrot cake, and carrot bread would have the asme texture,I think) if so, how much baby food (puréed carrots) should I use?
Thanks!
Jessica
@Kathy, I don’t know because I’ve not tried that before. But, if you test it, let us know!
Christina
@Kathy, Can I just say how much I LOVE this recipie!! My super picky son inhaled 2 pieces of it, as well as my even pickier husband 🙂 I had a ton of baby food left over from my youngest so I actually added 3 jars of carrot baby food to it (trying to use that stuff up wherever I can besided meatloaf!) It turned out fantastic. I didn’t replace the shredded carrots, but I bet you could try half shredded and half puree? might turn out great!
Jessica
So good to know. Thanks!
Marlyse
Made carrott bread this weekend and it turned out great. I made 2 loaves and used 2 cups of sugar and coconut milk and it was delicous. Even my husband who was skeptical to begin with ate 2 pieces right away. Also, 1 cup of carrots was a carrot apple blend of mush from my juicer and it worked out just fine. Now, if you had a suggestion for spinach that would be great.
Sara
I am so excited to try this for my MOPS meeting on Tuesday!
Another random note, the “print recipe” doesn’t work.
Jessica
It doesn’t work in all browsers for some reason. If you open chrome, it should work. Hope you like the bread!
Kristin
Just out of curiosity, what type/brand of loaf pans do you use? I need to buy a few more…
Jessica
I have some glass Pyrex, some larger Anchor Hocking, and one random metal one that is bigger than the others.
Mary G
I cut this recipe in half and made only two loaves–a good amount for my family of four. I did tweak it a little. I used two-thirds whole wheat pastry flour and one-third unbleached all purpose flour (a typical blend for us), I also dropped one-half cup of sugar out (for the two loaves), I used half oil and half applesauce, and added one-quarter cup of raisins to one of the loaves. I actually think I”ll add the raisins in the next time I make this–I liked the added flavor. Thanks for sharing this recipe–definitely will make it one of our regular morning bread rotations.
Jessica
@Mary G, sounds great! Thanks for sharing your tweaks!
Susan
Thanks, Jessica!!! 😉
Susan
Carla, in muffins, sweet breads & quick breads you can always substitute all natural no sugar added applesauce. I have NEVER had a problem in these types of recipes. Cookies & cakes I have had problems, depending on the type. Hope this helps. 🙂
Carla
@Susan, Thanks. Its been a bit since making quick breads. Last night however, I made a double batch of Jessica’s Chocolate Chip banana bread (crisis banana salvage moment) and swapped out 1/2 of the oil and it turned out great! Looking forward to trying this carrot bread!
Carla
Would love to try this (pretending not to see the 5 cups of sugar) but have to ask. Have you ever tried substituting some applesauce for some of the oil in this recipe? Recommended or no? 🙂
Jessica
I haven’t done a lot of experimenting with this other than tweaking the sugar content. But, remember it’s four large loaves. So, it’s really 1 1/4 cup of sugar per loaf.
Carla
@Jessica, LOL – Its purely psychological with the sugar!
KimH
Im already looking for this years Co-workers Christmas Goodies and I think this sounds like it just might be a wonderful one! Thanks for sharing this. Cant wait to try it! Sounds delightful!
allie zirkle
4 loaves… yields 12 servings… 🙂 monster appetites!!!
Jessica
@allie zirkle, yeah, the plugin doesn’t go bigger than 12. I will go manually change it. Sheesh. 😉
TallyMichelle
Ooh, good call on the coconut milk. I’ve got some & will try it!
Jennifer
Did you try the coconut milk? Does it need a bit of lemon added to give it the buttermilk tang?
TallyMichelle
Any tips on what to sub for buttermilk? (pesky milk allergies…)
I definitely want to make this!
Jessica
@TallyMichelle, coconut milk! (Can you do yogurt? That would be my other choice.)
TallyMichelle
@Jessica, Ooh, good call on the coconut milk. I’ve got some & will try it!
Lea
Think a mixture of shredded carrots & shredded zucchini would be good? I’ve got lots of both to use up.
Jessica
Yes, you could very easily do that. The zucchini might have more moisture, so just keep that in mind.
Tiffany @ DontWastetheCrumbs
That looks delicious! I buy carrots in bulk and we’re usually feasting on carrots for DAYS towards the end of the bag – in order not to waste any food. This would be a MUCH better way to utilize those last carrots. Thanks!
Mary G
Thank you so much for sharing this! I think I’ll give this a try this weekend. I enjoy your site and am amazed at all that you managed to do. Mine is a family of four (though two are teens), but I really like to bake at least two loaves or trays of muffins at once also. Thanks again.
Jackie
Now that’s my kind of recipe yielding 4 loaves. Think 4 cups sugar would be enough?
Jessica
I made it once with 4 cups and then a second time with 5 cups. 4 cups made a nice bread, but not a sweet bread. Would have been good with chicken salad or something as a sandwich. As a sweet bread, I preferred the 5 cup version.