Easy Carrot Bread Recipe (2024)

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.

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!

1. 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

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 canuse 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 currentlyusing a price book to track pricesand 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 buyingcases of flour from Bob’s Red Mill.

Other Sweet Treats You’ll Enjoy

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This post was originally published on April 12, 2012. It has been updated for content and clarity.